{"id":47397,"date":"2019-04-04T15:59:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T22:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=47397"},"modified":"2019-04-04T15:59:37","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T22:59:37","slug":"there-is-no-age-to-learn-to-speak-fluently-a-foreign-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/there-is-no-age-to-learn-to-speak-fluently-a-foreign-language\/","title":{"rendered":"There is no age to learn to speak fluently a foreign language"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nIn 2018, the publication of a\u00a0<\/span>new study<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on learning a second language made a big splash in the British press.\u00a0From the\u00a0<\/span>BBC<\/span><\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0<\/span>Daily Mail<\/span><\/em><\/a>\u00a0, via the\u00a0<\/span>Guardian<\/span><\/em><\/a>\u00a0, a whole series of headlines have conveyed this depressing message: it would be impossible to be able to speak fluently a foreign language by beginning his apprenticeship after the age of about 10 years.\u00a0All of these accounts actually distorted the findings of the study, misleading information.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the one hand, the question of fluency in a language, or the ability to speak it fluently, never appears in the original study, published in the journal\u00a0<\/span>Cognition<\/span><\/em>\u00a0.\u00a0There is a good reason for this: it is not what interests the authors of this research, nor indeed the other scientists working on foreign language learning.<\/span><\/p>\n

To speak fluently another language means that you are able to communicate with relative ease, without creating any constraint for the speaker as for the listener.\u00a0The President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, is fluent in English, although it can be clearly discerned that it is not his native language, for example when he uses the word\u00a0<\/span>“delicious”<\/span><\/a>\u00a0instead of “delightful” .<\/span>
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