The following Canguro English view features an interview with Cognitive Scientist Josh Hartshorne, of the Psychology department at Boston College, discussing the topics of: language acquisition, the critical period, and the importance of immersion. The interview explores our current understanding of language acquisition and what we now know about adult language acquisition, comparative to that of children and youths under 17 within the effective age. Along the way, the importance of patience, length of study, context and immersion are stressed as important factors, outweighing age. Additionally we are informed about: the difference between passive and expressive language exposure, knowledge caching and chunking, the effect of environmental learning pressures and choice, and optimization tradeoff during stages of development.
I always talk about how important patience is when you’re learning a language, because it’s really hard, and it takes a really long time, and recently I spoke to someone who knows that better than anyone: cognitive scientist Josh Hartshorne. In this interview we talk about the critical period, language acquisition, and the importance of immersion. I hope you enjoy it.