Is it possible to become bilingual

They concluded that the ability to learn a new language, at least grammatically, is strongest until the age of 18 after which there is a precipitous decline. To become completely fluent, however, learning should start before the age of At 18, kids typically graduate high school and go on to start college or enter the work force full-time.

Once they do, they may no longer have the time, opportunity or learning environment to study a second language like they did when they were younger. Alternatively, it is possible that after one masters a first language, its rules interfere with the ability to learn a second. Finally, changes in the brain that continue during the late teens and early 20s may somehow make learning harder.

This is not to say that we cannot learn a new language if we are over There are numerous examples of people who pick up a language later in life, and our ability to learn new vocabulary appears to remain constant, but most of us will not be able to master grammar like a native speaker—or probably sound like one either. Being a written quiz, the study could not test for accent, but prior research places the critical period for speech sounds even earlier.

Although the study was conducted only in English, the researchers believe the findings will transfer to other languages, and they are currently developing similar tests for Spanish and Mandarin. Perhaps even more important than when one learns a language is how. People who learned via immersion—living in an English-speaking country more than 90 percent of the time—were significantly more fluent than those who learned in a class.

Immersion has an enormous effect in our data—large even relative to fairly large differences in age. In what could be the most surprising conclusion, the researchers say that even among native speakers it takes 30 years to fully master a language. The study showed a slight improvement—roughly one percentage point—in people who have been speaking English for 30 versus 20 years.

The finding is consistent for both native and non-native speakers. Keep the same process from days , but cross off two words from your list every day. Besides letting you move through words twice as fast as words , going from one to two words daily when you get to day 36 pushes you to flex your memorization muscles.

Once you hit day 71, get started on actually learning your language. On the bad days, you might feel lost in the middle of an ocean of words and grammatical structures with no land in sight.

The best way to avoid this feeling is to set concrete weekly language learning goals so you can measure your progress and have something to work towards every week.

These goals can include memorizing a list of vocab words, getting down a certain grammatical construction or even just working through a text. If you hit points of frustration in your journey to becoming bilingual, the antidote is just to set specific goals and not worry about anything else.

The secret to learning any language is to learn to value improvement. Learning a language is a pretty massive task, so sometimes the best way not to let it get to you is to simply focus on meeting concrete, short-term goals on a regular schedule and let the rest fall into place by itself.

The idea is simple: Create a four-line dialogue between two imaginary people in real time, two lines for each person. Person 2 spoken : My life is a disaster. This exercise is a winner because it accomplishes so many things at once—it helps you learn vocabulary by using it in context, it makes you more fluent at producing the language in real time and it integrates your speaking and writing. Music is like steroids for your memory , only without all the bad health effects. Think of any song you know the lyrics to and then ask yourself, would you have memorized all those words without the accompanying music?

Just by picking a song you like, listening to it repeatedly and memorizing it, you can learn a wealth of new words. To get the most mileage out of this technique, you really should memorize the songs, or at least excerpts from them.

English enjoys tremendous dominance in the U. But if history is any indication, there will always be people in the U. Bialystok, Ellen, and Kenji Hakuta. New York: Basic Books. Genesee, Fred. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Hakuta, Kenji. Krashen, Stephen, R. Sarcella, and M. Long eds. Zentella, Ana Celia. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Interested in more on this topic? Check out Bilingualism and more books from LSA here. Donate Jobs Center News Room. Search form Search. What does it mean to say somebody is bilingual?

How do people become bilingual? Is it harder for a child to acquire two languages at once? Does bilingualism in America threaten the English language? For further information Bialystok, Ellen, and Kenji Hakuta. Why Can't Computers Use English? How can I get involved with LSA?