As I get older, I find it harder to study a new language. Several years ago, when I was a 12-year-old child, I could almost grasp all the grammar rules (which we needed a week's time to learn) as soon as my teacher gave an example. I never had any difficulty recieving what my teachers taught.
But now I'm in high school and I'm learning French. I think that learning a new language is not as easy as it used to be for me. It takes me more time to memorize words and phrases, and sometimes, my brains even refused to recieve some grammar rules that I used English grammar to write French without awareness, which is a damage.
Do you have the same problem?
And I'd be so pleased to recieve suggestions about my problem:)
I'm more than half-serious about this. I really believe this is part of it:
One of the reasons why it seems harder to learn a language as you age is that you get to know your own language better. You set higher standards for yourself. You raise the bar.
You start to express more complex thoughts in your own language, and you want to express them in your target language. It's harder to express 20-year-old thoughts than 12-year-old thoughts.
My own knowledge of English (my native language) has never stopped growing, although it's slowed down. I've noticed this in other people. People whose work involves writing English are better at it at age forty than they are in college. When professors complain about how bad college students' English is, they might be surprised if they went back and look at what they wrote in college themselves.
My wife wrote good English when I married her, but her punctuation was terrible, just terrible. Over the next twenty years, it just improved. She didn't study anything or try to improve and I never nagged her about it. It was the result of twenty more years of reading books and newspapers.
Maybe you weren't really as good at age twelve as you thought you were!
But, yes, certainly, there's an age effect. In my seventies, I am learning Spanish rather slowly, but I am learning Spanish.
It's not hard for me to learn a language because I got rid of those myths about ages that people love applying in our lives I confess that everytime I start to learn a new language I never know where to start, but I never said that this one is going to be harder.
Be careful, words have power and repeating them to yourself your brain will get used to that.
Just compare the things you learn easily and the ones you have some hard time, watch your actions between both and to see how you are blocking your own skills.
Yes, some leanguages are more complex than others, but if I baby that has no idea about the world and itself can learn it, sure you can do better than him.
Good luck =)
P.s: people that love to say that something is hard, they haven't tried it.
I think one factor is that as our brains get older they become more stuck in their ways. I read somewhere that it becomes harder to learn in general as we get older because of this reason. I would guess that this more evident when learning languages, because it is a whole range of new structures which need to be completely internalised.
This article is quite interesting, it might help
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-hard-to-learn-new-language-adult-2014-7
