Language study puts accent on learning

The learning of second languages, while not quite as mysterious as a child’s learning of his native tongue, still holds significant unanswered questions: What makes some people swift second-language learners while others struggle? What role does a person’s native language play when it comes to learning a second language? What strategies can the learner use? “I think we have huge amounts of data on this and a lot of complicated theories, but we’re very early on in terms of really understanding this,” says Joseph Salmons, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures and a professor of German. “Fundamentally, this is a problem of how the mind works, of how cognition changes over the lifespan.”