It's so hard!

Yes. Language learning is hard. It requires us to sort of re-wire our brains. And most language learners will tell you, it seems the older we get the more difficult it can be.

Is this really true? Are we adults over the hill as far as language learning is concerned?

Maybe not. It was once thought that the older we get, the less able our brains are to adapt to new languages and use them effectively. As if our brains sort of petrified in time. In fact, it was believe that after puberty, the brain effectively divides itself in two parts, making it more difficult for "global" learning (that is, learning that takes place on both hemispheres of the brain) to take place.

New research shows that those assumptions are false. It turns out it is largely a case of our perceptions of how our own (first) language works. Here's a quote from Dr. Paul Iverson of the University College London Centre for Human Communication:

Adult learning does not appear to become difficult because of a change in neural plasticity. Rather, we now think that learning becomes hard because experience with our first language 'warps' perception. We see things through the lens of our native language and that 'warps' the way we see foreign languages.

According to Dr. Iverson, it's more a matter of un-learning some habits. So what can you do to improve your ability to learn a new language (in teacher-speak this is known as L2)?

In this blog, we're going to address some specific strategies for adult learners of other languages--and by "adult" learners, I mean anybody over 13 or 14 years of age. For starters, I'll share with you a short list of traits of the Good Language Learner, developed by three professors waayyyyy back in the 70s: 

The Good Language Learner (GLL) Strategies 

(Naiman, Frohlich, & Stern)

1.	find a learning style that suits you
2.	involve yourself in the language learning process
3.	develop an awareness of language both as system and as communication
4.	pay constant attention to expanding your language
5.	develop the L2 as a separate system
6.	take into account the demands that L2 learning imposes

We're going to come back to these strategies later. In the meantime, hasta luego, bis später, à bientôt.