I took three years of Spanish and got an A every semester. Even when it was still fresh in my mind, I was nowhere near able to hold even a very simple conversation. And now just a few years later it's all totally gone from my brain.
My mother's native language is Spanish and she never taught me, which I resent her for. But I still find it incredible how shitty my public school education in Spanish was. We really should be teaching kids a second language from kindergarten up.
Three high school semesters in any language is not going to be enough to learn a language. You either gotta learn it young when your neurons are still nice and plastic or put in lots and lots of work and maintain it
i think it also depends on what type of classes you took. my freshmen year class was ezpz mostly basic vocab, but after that they started breaking out the more advanced conjugations that still make my head spin thinking about them
No offense, but I despise this kind of essentialist thinking, that once you're past a certain age it's all over. It's the way languages are taught. Comprehensible Input is where it's at. Take a look at the first five min of video link nested below (the bot removed the comment b/c it had a youtube link). You can watch the rest of the vid but the main part is from the first five min.
well it's certainly not "all over" if you don't learn a language young, but it's going to be more difficult to become bilingual from a developmental perspective (less neuroplasticity) and a practical perspective (typically less time to spend learning due to adult obligations)
Language acquisition research on a "critical period" for language learning is inconclusive. Neuroplasticity may make it easier for a child to acquire/differentiate specific linguistic information (e.g. sounds that exist in one but not both of the languages) but being socialized into a second language discourse community /also/ means that they're getting far more time practicing the language.
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