Can we Acquire a Language Naturally as Adults?

How are you being deliberate in your study of a language? The app I use to learn languages —> bit.ly/3TXXAlw My 10 FREE secrets to language learning —> www.thelinguist.com/

Kids don’t even have to move to a new country to learn a language or languages. They can do it if their parents speak to them in two different languages and their country speaks another- trilingual

I like Steve's videos. I'm 62 and learning Mandarin in China where I've lived for 8 years. I'm studying HSK4. My goals are to gradually improve my understanding by studying 2-3 hours probably 3-5 times per week. I can't speak Mandarin but by focusing on listening and reading hope that my speaking will improve over time.

I feel like the infant Vs adult analogy isn't really fair since an infant is in fact striving to understand, whereas an adult, with background radio 'noise,' isn't really trying to understand it. You could say that an infant is actually trying harder than we adults do since his/her survival depends on it. I don't believe kids just soak it up from background noise, I think they're really putting in a tremendous effort (during the first 2-3 years) to decipher what they're hearing, it's just that none of us remember it. It might be that they're even doing it from inside of the womb? I don't know if that's been proven (kinda hard to prove), but it doesn't seem that unlikely. I really think it's a myth that infants somehow magically acquire language, we just massively underestimate how much effort is going on. I agree with pretty much everything else in this video. If I ever get to a C1/2 level in a language it'll be almost entirely down to you Steve - not only did you inspire me (and continue to inspire me) but you taught me about the theory of how language learning works. I'll be forever grateful to you for that.

being overcorrected can really harm motivation, I think one correction placed right can help, but being corrected every second sentence can just make you quit... and it might be why so many people feel like "they can't learn languages", they might have been overcorrected and also might have been doing things that are not fun to them

I am listening to podcasts daily, reading articles in Spanish, and using a couple of the language apps, also going through a Spanish grammar book occasionally. I’m going to trust the process and keep doing what I’m doing. Whenever I have the opportunity to speak Spanish, I do it. Otherwise I’m good with what I’m doing now. There are words I couldn’t remember, that when I see them now, I actively know the meaning. So far I’ve had a lot of fun ‘learning’ Spanish.

I'd just like to say that I'll be 60 tomorrow, and earlier this year when I found your channel and heard you say you learned 11 languages after 60, it really motivated me to finally learn Spanish. I've been off and on learning for 20 years, but can only barely communicate. Even though my wife is from Ecuador, I was born, raised, and still live in Miami, my dad spoke Spanish fluently, and my best friend is from Argentina, I never cared to learn. Thanks for showing me how to learn my way, reading, I'm learning a lot now.

My children were raised with French as their first language. They learnt English by listening to me alone, and the occasional TV programme, and acquired it so easily from a young age. I contemplated for a long time whether I should sit down and help them with reading and writing, but held off doing so, and they simply acquired it by themselves, again from a young age and with no help from anybody. I could throw a word at them (often quite a complicated one) I knew they hadn't heard before, and they would spell it correctly nearly every time. They also had no problem reading books in English meant for their age range. Acquisition seems much harder as we get older, but it certainly seems like the better way to go about it.

Legendary video, Steve, you hit a lot of key points. What matters most is how much you want to understand your input. How badly do you really want to know what the characters in your shows and books are saying? That's the key.

I've been working on my second language for 3 1/2 years now. And I'm always looking at ways to make my acquisition of the language more efficient.

I have a cousin that learned Hindi from her father, English from her mother and Spanish from the nanny. Then spent time in Russia and picked that up too. All before she was 10.

I think it’s a mixture of both but such an informative video thank you! Definitely helping me with my Japanese language journey 💜

We can. And it's the best way to do it. The problem with correction (apart from it's effect on the learner's confidence) is that you're interrupting them when they're trying to say something, so instead of listening to your correction, they're still thinking about what they were trying to say and how to finish saying it. That's why I think it's not that effective. Self-correction is much more effective in my opinion.

Discipline and perseverance and immersion.

Hey, this was really excellent, succinct and it answered basically all the questions I had in mind when I searched YouTube and a bit more. Thank you!

I think for me I’ve experienced several phases of learning English. At first it was fun, I learnt a few words, I gradually built up my vocabulary and I could speak a little and make a conversation. Until I was 17 years old I met a native English speaker who came from the UK, I had some conversation with him, and I thought myself brilliant in English because I can make a conversation in English. However when I was truly immersed in English environment when I went abroad for the first time, I realized how little did I know😢. Then I lack confidence in the language which I thought I was so good at. Until today, I’m still learning and improving everyday. The more you know, the more you realized you don’t know. Well, the only thing that I know is that I know nothing.

Oh wow steve, I so agree with you! I was taking a course that did all of these things, comprehension questions, quick corrections as your trying to express yourself, completely eroded the confidence that I was building. I had an excellent tutor that made me feel so good about my progress and then she moved to France so I relied on this other local class over zoom and I felt so bad about myself in their method of teaching very old school. After working with this course for the past few years I finally quit, best decision ever! I have to now figgure out how to go it alone but i'm far enough into the language i'm fine with that.

I don’t know if I agree on the correction point or not. But I’ve noticed is that whenever a non-Chinese person trying to speak Chinese, Chinese people like to correct them if they say anything wrong. We see this as a kind help for that person because we are helping them to improve. However on the other hand, I’ve never encountered English natives to correct other non-English natives’ English. At first I didn’t understand why. I thought they are not willing to help, but later on I gradually realized that it’s the cultural difference. They might see correction of other’s language is rude or impolite etc. this is a big cultural difference. For me I always ask kindly in advance for whoever the English native I am speaking to to correct my English if I say anything wrong, if I didn’t ask, they very likely will ignore. I think this is a huge cultural difference

God tier video, perfect explaination of what its like to learn it on your own

Also Steve, I really like the way you speak. Your pronunciation sounds so standard and you speak really clearly. I could almost understand each word, even if some words I didn’t know the meaning, I could easily look it up because you speak so clearly I can always guess correctly how to spell them.