Can We Learn Languages Once We Grow Up?

Guitar Zero is an eye-opening book for anyone past his or her youth that wants to learn something new. Author Gary Marcus’ focus was based on a childhood dream to learn how to play the guitar. Suffering from lack of rhythm and an inexistent ear for music he was discouraged at the hope of ever being able to play an instrument. But being a Professor of Psychology and the Director of the NYU Center for Language and Learning he saw this as an opportunity for an experiment, and used himself as the guinea pig.  He set out to devote his time exclusively to learning this skill for as long as he could stand over his break. And his results were encouraging for those of us who have dreams like Gary. He did infact accomplish what he set out to do. He learned to play guitar pretty well and even wrote and performed a song. His research and experience does not only apply to learning music. It can be applied to many different areas and topics in our life and that is exactly why reading this book I was so encouraged.

The assignment to read this book came at a fitting time in my life, as I set out on a journey to finally learn to speak Greek fluently. I have grown up in a traditional Greek home. My father immigrating here from Greece in his teens, and my mother’s grandparents doing the same, daily life for me is that something close to a scene out of My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  But, there is one big difference between my life and the movie. While I can understand most Greek spoken to me, speaking it myself is like pulling teeth. And most of the research out there isn’t to encouraging. But this year Loyola is offering and Introduction to Modern Greek and I enrolled. I am hopeful I can finally learn to speak Greek and this is due to reading Gary’s book and new research in the field of psychology and neuroscience I am encouraged by the possibility that you can learn past your youth.  His research can be applied to new interesting concepts being researched in the field of psychology and neuroscience.

Two concepts from his book, can learning through practice be effective, and is it even possible to learn at an older age are two questions being asked in a lot of recent research. Guiding me to ask the question, have we been wrongly discouraged in a journey to developing new skills or learning a new language? Has it just been people’s inability to put in the work and get discouraged, and not the fact that it isn’t possible? In an article from ScienceDaily, it suggests that we can retrain our brains to learn a second language, and the problems that arise are not from an inability in our brains. And it is that if we are given the right stimulus we can be trained to recognize it.  In two studies done by Dr. Paul Iverson and Dr. Valerie Hazan at UCL’s Department of Phonetics and Linguistics examined just how to retune the brain to process speech sounds to make learning languages easier in adulthood. They found that it is past experience with out native language that hinders our ability to learn a new language. That in fact it is not due to a biological factor. And through training to recognize the right sounds and not get held up on the one we are used to, we can essentially change how we process a new language. And this will make learning a second language more easy. Furthermore in an article from the New York Times by Oliver Sacks titled This Year, Change Your Mind; this new research is being assessed. He states that our cerebral cortex where language and thought are processed can actually be rewired as we grow older.  Our brain has a great capacity to create new paths. Research being done is actually showing that our brains do not stop growing as we age. And in fact every time we practice and old skill or learn a new one existing neural connections are strengthened and over time new ones are created. This is great news for those of us who are setting out to learn new skills later than in childhood.  If our brains are capable of creating these new paths then that means practice plays a great role in our learning. Like Gary showed if we set out and dedicate time and practice to what we aim to learn then we will in fact be successful.  This is further supported in and article by Kendra Cherry titled, What is Brain Plasticity? It further supports the notion that as we age our brains create new pathways and alter existing one to learn new information. And as we are learning this new information some connections are weakened and some that aren’t used die off which is actually the reason out brain is able to adapt to the changing environment.

All of this should defiantly be encouraging to those who thought that we are hopeless to learn new skills and languages when we get older. This father this research keeps going more strategies in how to learn new skills will developed and no one will ever think that just because they are older they cannot learn something new. In my own journey to learn to speak Greek I am encouraged by the fact that research is showing our brain can create new neural paths so I can actually be successful and not a lost cause because I hadn’t learned it in my childhood like it was once thought.