Too Old To Learn?
Too old to learn?
Does this sound like a strange topic coming from me? I’m a writer and a self-publisher; what do I know about learning — and what does it have to do with this blog?
Well, being a writer, I need to know grammar. Pretty obvious, huh? But when I was in high school, I totally zoned out during grammar lessons. They were delivered in a bored monotone because it wasn’t just the students who were bored by it. We had to diagram sentences and we never put any of the lessons to good, practical use. (Somehow they’ve changed the way grammar is taught in schools – my daughter, a senior in high school, loves grammar, thinks it’s really fun and enjoys learning about it. Yes, the current public school system has finally done something right!)
So what does a writer who doesn’t know grammar do, aside from relying heavily on professional editors? Well, I can tell you, it’s horribly embarrassing giving your work over to a total stranger when it’s filled with incredibly stupid grammar mistakes. So, I had to learn. Now I make some mistakes, but not even half the number I used to (and sometimes I just use bad grammar to sound more colloquial – as in that last sentence, thank you for pointing that out).
“But, wait,” you say, “I’m too old to learn anything new, and certainly not anything as complicated as grammar!”
Bullshit!
Studies have shown that ‘fluid intelligence’, the ability to think logically in novel situations without using prior knowledge — like pattern recognition, working memory, abstract thinking — peaks in one’s twenties. (From “A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond” by Patricia Cohen, published in the New York Times) But does that mean that you can’t learn anything new? Nope. In fact, ‘crystallized intelligence’, the kind of skill that you get through education — verbal ability, inductive reasoning, judgment, and hard facts — actually gets better as you get older. And brain plasticity, the ability of the brain to make new connections and neural pathways, is pretty much constant throughout your life (from Brain Facts, by the Society for Neuroscience — my daughter’s book, not mine).
So, yes, memorizing a bunch of grammar rules in isolation is going to be a bit harder if you’re an older person. However, if you put those rules into context, show how they make sense, how a sentence sounds when the rules are used incorrectly compared to how it sounds when they’re used the right way, then voilà! You, too, can learn grammar, no matter how old you are.
To prove this, over the next few weeks I have asked my editor, Nina, to go over a few grammar rules which have either stumped me or which I see being broken all the time: commas, run-on sentences and apostrophes. If there are any grammar rules that you have problems with, tell me and we’ll address them too. If I don’t hear from you then the topics above are the ones we’ll cover — and yes, that’s a threat. 
Ready?
