This article was posted on LinkedIn's group on foreign languages (bilingual professionals). At first I thought it would have some excellent scientific evidence on why children learn languages better than adults (because of the title), but then I read it. It doesn't say much, and some of it I disagree with. They said that children don't get embarrassed when making mistakes, while adults do. I suppose that makes some sense, but I do think it depends on the individual, and not their age. I've seen kids who get embarrassed very easily, and adults who don't. My husband is great with foreign languages because he doesn't mind making mistakes. I, on the other hand, want to speak the perfect sentence, which can be slow and annoying. They prefer Shu!

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
They said that children don't get embarrassed when making mistakes, while adults do.

That's not the way I interpret it. It said "children do not feel embarrassed by novelty," and if they make a mistake they will try again because other children are not as critical as adults. True, if adults laugh at a child who makes a mistake, that child may be embarrassed. Here's what it says:

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Socio-psychological reasons are completely different in nature but no less significant. Children do not feel embarrassed by novelty, since everything is new and consequently nothing is really abnormal. New sounds, even when very different from the mother tongue’s, are not frightening. Children utter them convincingly whereas adults might hesitate to stress them as strongly – they are so “weird”! More importantly still, children will not shy away from trying even if not completely sure, from having a go even if they are mistaken and must start again. Besides, other children will not be critical of the mistakes, at least not in the same proportions. As for adults, they might fear that their social status – which comes across so naturally in their mother tongue – could be degraded by an incomplete command of the other language. To make a long story short, social self-awareness sometimes plays against language learning by adults.

It also talks about the decline in neuroplasticity with age. It says cognitive abilities decline with age and " interference of the native tongue probably increases with age – age being a proxy of usage of this language ."

It sums it up by saying "children are more able to learn foreign languages than adults because of neurological and socio-psychological reasons."

I'm not sure what there is to disagree with.

I don't think adults or children are any different when it comes to being embarrassed by novelty. Embarrassment is embarrassment, rather by novelty or otherwise. I don't think there is much difference between when adults or children are embarrassed. I do think, however, that others feel this is true. I just don't agree.

I also don't agree with all the gobbledygook about about "generational differences." Yes, because times change, there are some differences. For example, teens now are on their cell phones all the time, and of course 20 years ago teens weren't. They were on the phone instead. Big difference? Probably not.

Generational differences aren't nearly as dramatic as you read about, in my opinion. People are individualistic, and I find all this categorizing of age groups as overly simplistic and often not verified by research. As with this short report, there was no evidence - they just make the statement like we all must know it's true.