Young children don’t need explicit lessons on rules in order to learn to speak well.‡ Most adults can’t learn without them. There’s some overlap in the two approaches, of course—many kids eventually take language classes, and adults pick up some things by ear—but they are starkly different. The brains of young children are specialized for language learning: they operate on statistical principles to discern the patterns in language§ (for example, When Mom talks about herself as the subject, she uses the word “I” and puts it at the start of the sentence. When she’s the object, she uses “me” and
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