1. The author is the CEO of an online language learning company. That’s a strong indication that the article might be biased.
2. This whole “study” is based on data gathered through a “viral Facebook quiz” in which people provided self-assestments of their own skills and learning process. Facebook is not a controlled lab environment, and people are subject to all kind of biases and thus terrible at self-assessment. This whole thing screams “amateurish” and I would not trust it.
3. Results are apparently so ambiguous and controversial that, as the author states,
> a number of journalists have misinterpreted this paper badly, resulting in a lot of articles falsely stating things as embarrassing and misleading as “Becoming fluent in another language as an adult might be impossible”, when in fact the opposite is shown.
This whole thing smells funny. Think I’ll pass, thanks.