{"id":43648,"date":"2018-05-11T13:53:21","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T20:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=43648"},"modified":"2018-05-11T13:53:21","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T20:53:21","slug":"youre-never-too-old-to-become-fluent-in-a-foreign-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/youre-never-too-old-to-become-fluent-in-a-foreign-language\/","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019re never too old to become fluent in a foreign language"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nA new\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0on second language learning has recently taken the\u00a0media<\/a>by storm. A range of headlines \u2013 from the\u00a0BBC<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0Daily Mail<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 all trumpeted the depressing message that it\u2019s impossible to become fluent in a foreign language after around age ten. All of these reports dramatically misrepresented the findings from the study, and the message they sent is flat-out wrong.<\/p>\n

For one thing, the words \u201cfluency\u201d or \u201cfluent\u201d never even appear in the original study, published in the journal Cognition. There\u2019s a good reason for this: fluency is not what the study\u2019s authors, or any other scientists studying the effect of age in foreign language learning, are interested in.<\/p>\n

To be fluent in another language means that you can communicate with relative ease, that is, without it being a real strain on either the speaker or the listener. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is fluent in English, despite the fact that you can hear he is not a native speaker and that he may, on occasion,\u00a0use the word \u201cdelicious\u201d<\/a>\u00a0when he probably meant to say \u201cdelightful\u201d.<\/p>\n