In the language world there seems to be a few core debates, one of which is 'critical periods' i.e. that one learns languages better before our brains are 'wired'. However an article in last week's Observer doubts this hypothesis, suggesting that although there may be differences in speed of learning, there hasn't actually been much study in this area. And there was me thinking this was a done scientific deal!

So what's the rub? On a general level it seems as if we can learn languages at any age and that kids may have better accents, but adults can learn that given sufficient time and effort. And that's the crux really. If we put enough time and effort into learning something we will get better, and what could be better than that? The author, psychologist Gary Marcus, goes on to explain that adults may need to learn in bite size bits to progress as they would wish (kids may not need this) but that all in all there's not the discernible difference that we may have been lead to believe exists. Good news for us language learners who started later (I started with Spanish at 20, German at 22)!

One last nugget of information from the article was that we should concentrate on our weaknesses, instead of our strengths (which can be solipsistic), and that we should challenge ourselves with goals that are slightly ahead of where we are at now.

So what does that mean for me? Well, I'll have to concentrate on the areas of the languages which I find difficult. With my German, for instance, that means more focus on tenses and vocabulary. With Spanish, on the other hand, that means focus on colloquial and idiomatic usage. With Swedish, it just means practice!

Picture from Wikipedia