New research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests that if want to achieve native-like in a new language, they should start learning that language before the of ten. The researchers added that children up to the age of 17 or 18 remain at learning grammar. There is bad for those who want to pick up a new language beyond their late . The researchers say this is past the " period" when language-learning starts to decline. Researcher Joshua Hartshorne said: "As far as a child is , it's quite easy to become bilingual....That's when you're best at learning languages. It's not really something that you can make up ."
The was based on an analysis of from a 10-minute online grammar quiz. Over 670,000 language learners of all ages participated in the . Researchers measured the grammatical ability of people who started learning a language at different in their life. Professor Hartshorne focused on grammar that were most likely to confuse a non-native speaker as a of that person's proficiency. MIT researcher Josh Tenenbaum suggested people might be too busy to learn a language in life. He said: "After 17 or 18, you leave home, you work full time, or you become a university student. All of these might impact your learning for any language.
