Many employers now require their employees to take courses aimed at making them aware of unconscious bias. Judging another person’s capability or credibility based on their gender, race, or whether they use a wheelchair is obviously discriminatory, as such characteristics are unrelated to competence and expertise.
A new study on second language learning has recently taken the media by storm. A range of headlines—from the BBC to the Daily Mail and The Guardian—all trumpeted the depressing message that it’s impossible to become fluent in a foreign language after around age ten. All of these reports dramatically misrepresented the findings from the study, and the message they sent is flat-out wrong.
If you want to learn a foreign language, should you begin before a certain age in order to fully master it? Popular opinion holds that young children find it easier than adults because childhood is a “critical period” for language learning.
How robust are languages learned in childhood but disused later in life? A new study by researchers at McGill University and the University of Montreal has found that the forgotten birth language of adoptees can apparently leave its traces in the brain, many years after the adoption has taken place.
