What’s the best age to start learning English? How many languages can a person learn? Today we look at some interesting language learning facts.

Voice message from Mariela from Ecuador
Statistics and research on language learning

What’s the best age to start learning English?
Young children don’t learn a language – they acquire it.
As babies, we have a better ear for different sounds. Toddlers can pick up native accents with astonishing speed.
As adults, we have longer attention spans and crucial skills like literacy that allow us to continually expand our vocabulary.
Different life stages give us different advantages in language learning.
There are other factors that help us learn languages such as social circumstances, teaching methods and love and friendships.
Young children are not usually very good at ‘explicit language learning’ (rules, paying attention, memory)
Studies in Spain and Israel showed that adults were better at understanding and applying language rules than children.
A recent study at MIT showed that to achieve native-like knowledge of English grammar, it is best to start by about 10 years old. The study also showed that we can keep getting better at languages, including our own, over time.
(Source: BBC: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/ 20181024-the-best-age-to-learn-a-foreign-language )

How many languages can a person learn?
A lot of research suggests that bilingual (or trilingual) natives are at an advantage when it comes to learning more languages that are not native to them. It might be because they’re already used to switching between languages frequently, whether they’re “naturally gifted” or not. e.g. People who grow up speaking Spanish and Catalan, or Spanish and Quechua, or Hindi and Punjabi, or Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese.

hyperpolyglots – Michael Erard, in book Babel No More:
Graham Cansdale, 14 languages.
Cansdale uses all 14 languages professionally as a translator at the European Commission in Brussels.
Lomb Kató, 16 languages.
This Hungarian polyglot said five of these “lived inside” her.
Five others needed at least a half-day of review in order to be reactivated, and with the six remaining she could do translation.
Confidence, she claimed, was crucial to language learning.
Johan Vandewalle, 22 languages.
In 1987, Vandewalle won the Polyglot of Flanders contest, where he was tested in 22 languages (though he has studied more).
The contest required 10-minute conversations with native speakers, with 5-minute breaks in between.
Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, 40 to 72 languages (he died in 1849).
14 languages which he had studied but not used; 11 in which he could have a conversation; 9 which he spoke not quite perfectly but with a perfect accent;
30 languages that he had totally mastered.

(Source: http://mentalfloss.com/article/49138/how-many-languages-it-possible-know)

What does it mean to ‘know’ a language?

Some people learn a foreign language faster than others
Experienced learners ‘learn how to learn’.
They start seeing patterns in grammar rules and with time they develop the ability to know exactly how to take on a new language.
Don’t forget the influence of motivation. We each have our own reasons to learn a new language and some reasons are stronger than others. For instance, emigration is an extremely strong, perhaps even obligatory, reason for learning/improving a foreign language. Both Craig and Reza know this, as does Reza’s father, who emigrated to the UK from Punjab at around 18 years old to study at university in Glasgow.
You only need about 1500 words to have a conversation with someone in English. You don’t need to be fluent.
Mastering a foreign language and being fluent means knowing around 5000 words.
Interestingly, many foreign speakers of English find it easier to understand other foreign speakers of English, even from a country other than their own, rather than native English speakers! Why do you think this could be?

(Source: https://www.mondly.com/

…and now it’s your turn to practise your English.
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