6 . Why do children learn so quickly? Is it simply a necessity, or is a child’s brain more capable of taking in new information than an adult’s brain?

“It is a common way of thinking that ‘children are like sponges’ and have the magical ability to learn new skills faster than an adult, but there are some misconceptions here, “ said Debbie Raven, a researcher at the University of Chester. “A child’s cognitive (认知的) development is age-related and, naturally, children perform worse than their older peers in most areas. However, there are times when being young brings an advantage, and this is especially true around their earliest years.

This advantage is largely due to neuroplasticity, meaning the brain’s ability to form and change its connections, pathways and wiring based on experiences. Neuroplasticity is what gives children the capacity to learn-and, if necessary, unlearn-habits, routines, approaches and actions very quickly. This ability is most constant and rapid before a child’s fifth birthday, when much of what they encounter or experience is novel. “This ability to learn quickly is connected to several areas, including plasticity, their experiences with adults, their environment, and their biological drive to explore, “ Raven said. “Childhood is a place where children spend their time catching up with adults’ more sophisticated abilities. “

Language learning, in particular, is an area where children often have a huge advantage over adults. This is largely because “babies are able to tune in to the rhythm and sounds used in their native language, and can therefore become fluent speakers by the age of four. “This ability can help young children learn a second or third language with apparent ease, Raven said.

In a research paper, the authors suggest that “human babies are born seeing and hearing linguistic information that older children and adults miss, although they lose this ability with more experience in their environments. Moreover, babies can “discriminate speech sounds and tones used in al of the world’s languages, making them open to al input, regardless of the linguistic environment they are born into.

9 . Four Cool Languages

Chinese

Around 1.4 billion people speak Chinese. Chinese is a tonal (声调的) language, meaning that changing the tone of just one syllable (音节) can affect a word’s meaning. Chinese writing has ancient roots, which is thought to have developed starting around 2000 B. C.

Arabic

Over 370 million people speak Arabic. Written Arabic uses a cursive-style font (连笔) that looks more like artworks than writing. Arabic is written from right to left rather than left to right, making it different from many other languages.

English

Around 379 million people speak English as a native language. It’s an official language in a huge number of other countries.

English is the most widely spoken second language, with over a billion people speaking it as a non-native language. That means around twice as many people speak English as a second language than people who speak it as a first language.

Italian

Nearly 68 million people speak Italian. If you play music or sing, chances are that you already know a lot of Italian because many familiar musical terms are actually Italian.

Not only will learning Italian help you pick up vocabulary, but it will also help you understand the meanings of musical terms in greater depth.