Scientists have found that age acquisition influence language learning. The critical period for language learning is between the ages of one to seven. This means that children are better at learning new language than adults. However, an article written by Mary Schleppegrell present contradicting results from current theory. In "The Older Language Learner" Schleppegrell wrote, "there is no decline in the ability to learn as people get older". The article went on to cites researches done by Krashen in 1979 to indicated that adult may have an easier and rapider time than children when It come to communicating a new foreign language (Krashen, Long, and Scarcella, 1979). Schleppegrell also incorporate Walsh claims that, "in important respects adults have superior language learning capabilities"(Walsh and Diller, 1978), which stated that the neural cell responsible for linguistic process develop with ages. Thus adults can make "higher order association" to the stuff that they had already acquired. This means that adult have a larger resource center for reference which contribute to ability to rapidly learn new information. In essence, adult can learn a new language at the same rate as children given the right condition. There may be some true to this, but the article fails to take into account the proactive interference in the processes of acquiring new information. As shown in the example of a tennis player who is trying to learn to play racket ball. The similarity between the two sports may cause the player to utilize their tennis skill rather than the new rules just as a new language may inference with the old. The below video elaborate on Schleppegrell's claim.
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