Your age shouldn’t put you off learning a new language – what the research says

By Karen Roehr-Brackin, Reader, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex

If you’ve always wanted to learn a new language, don’t let age put you off. People aged over 60 can be independent and flexible in how they learn a language – and successful, too.

There is ample evidence from decades of research that, as we age, some of our perceptual and cognitive abilities gradually decline. Our hearing and vision are not as sharp as they used to be, we process information less speedily, and our memory may not be as good as it was when we were younger. These are all known corollaries…

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