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Hello! My name is Eveline and I would like to comment on the Essential Question
of this week "People with high IQ's are good language learners".
Generally speaking, I don't agree with this assumption, exept for maybe only
the young learners. For them it might be true, as the brighter you are when you are a kid,
the more likely you will perform good and demonstrate good language acquisition.
But as we grow older and older and eventually as we become adults and take a lot of responsibilities,
we become obsessed with the idea of controlling things and of being perfect, actually,
of controlling people's perception of us. We tend to make sure that we are good,
that we are perfect, that we are approved. That's why being smart in that case actually may prevent you from
acquiring a language. Because acquiring and acquisition mean that
you need to contact with the real world before you actually are perfect in that field,
because during that contact, I mean, establishing that contact with the real world,
during applying your knowledge to the real world, you acquire a language and become perfect in it.
That's why, unfortunatelty, the smarter and brighter adults are,
the more likely they will avoid good learning strategies,
which help to acquire a language. And the more likely
they will choose strategies, which have nothing to do with acquiring, but deal only just with learning a language.
Such as going through grammar books, watching videos, reading books, whatever.
But no contact with the real world before they think they are perfect.
But the point is, as I said, that you will never be perfect, in terms of learning a language,
before you will try apply it [language] to the real world.
So I don't agree with the Statement. And I find it a little bit sad and maybe not so obvious,
but, unfortunately, it's true for a lot of adults language learners.
And the last thing I would like to mention is that actually I agree with Dr. Shane when he said that
sometimes it's being smart that makes you look silly. That might be true in terms of learning languages.