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Chapter 12: Adult Language Learning

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  • Page ID
    192736

    • Catherine Anderson, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Derek Denis, Julianne Doner, Margaret Grant, Nathan Sanders, and Ai Taniguchi
    • eCampusOntario
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    Learning Objectives

    When you’ve completed this chapter, you’ll be able to:

    • discuss the ways that learning a language as an adult differs from acquiring a language from birth,
    • understand some of the motivations and challenges of learning an additional language,
    • identify processes that are typical of learning any language as an adult,
    • predict how an adult learner’s first language can affect their learning of an additional language.

    Many linguistics students know more than one language – in fact, the metalinguistic awareness that goes along with bilingualism, multilingualism, or language learning is often what attracts learners to linguistics in the first place. While Chapter 11 considered how humans acquire language from birth, this chapter examines how we learn a language after the first one.

    This page titled Chapter 12: Adult Language Learning is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Catherine Anderson, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Derek Denis, Julianne Doner, Margaret Grant, Nathan Sanders, and Ai Taniguchi (eCampusOntario) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.