Joseph Lee Rodgers

Can old people learn a new language? Can the author of this article, a particular old person, improve his French enough to matter? A perusal of articles in popular and research literature about language learning and aging suggests changes in the answers to these questions over time. A few decades ago, age threshold models suggested that very young children could be highly proficient in learning second, third, or even many languages, but that ability declined dramatically with age—eventually reaching an ability asymptote at close to zero for older adults. At older ages, language learning was viewed by some experts as virtually impossible. More recently, as expected, language-learning models have become subtler and more expansive. At almost all ages, learning grammar is more difficult than learning vocabulary. Learning to speak, and mastering an accent, is more difficult than learning to read. But recent literature suggests that older language learning can be achieved by many, even in some cases with high proficiency, given appropriate motivation and reasonable cognitive functioning.

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