I present this as a myth of second language acquisition语言获得 in order to give classroom teachers realistic expectations for the English language learners in their class. When I say that teenagers and adults learn a second language faster than children, I am talking about academic language学术性语言. (Mc Laughlin, 1992) The purpose of presenting this myth to teachers is to emphasize强调 that they should not expect miraculous results惊人的结果, assume that children have few inhibitions害羞 尴尬 than adults or expect that learning a new language is easier for children than it is for adults.

I think we all recognize that young children easily acquire（动）习得 the language required for social interaction in an elementary school. Children outperform表现超过 adults in the area of pronunciation发音, Children might also be more motivated积极的 to interact socially社交互动 with their classmates and to acquire social language. They do not have to learn as much to achieve communicative competence沟通能力 in a second language. A child's construction句子构建 are shorter and simpler, and vocabulary is smaller.

Older students and adults, however, have access to the memory techniques记诵技巧 and other strategies 方法that more experienced learners use in acquiring vocabulary and in learning grammatical rules语法规则. These findings may reflect the mode of language instruction used in Europe, where emphasis has traditionally been placed on formal grammatical analysis正式文法分析. Older children are more skilled更娴熟 in dealing with this approach and hence might do better.

This same colleague told me that Patricia Kuhl’s findings prove that children learn languages faster. However, Patricia Kuhl's research does not negate 否决the myth. She maintains that babies' brains婴儿大脑 have the ability to retain sounds保留声音 from different languages There are many more factors involved in language acquisition than retaining sounds. .

New studies are being done all the time. New studies are exciting and do spark激起 a lot of interesting conversations.

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