This article, like other things I've read in books like "The Organized Mind", or the class "Learning How to Learn" is that learning for adults is usually difficult not because of reduced learning capacity, but instead individual behaviors, emotional regulation, and culture.
Dr. Levetin suggests that it's mostly around how much frustration you can handle, and how much time you think you have left vs. the amount of value you'll get from what you are learning. Procrastination, a great killer of self-education, is primarily driven by low emotional intelligence/regulation.
This is exactly what I get from this article again: the issue is not brain plasticity in learning, but the willingness to be frustrated, a desire to learn new things (we can't all be Paul Erdos) and the time to learn.
It's more than just willingness. It's having access to the time and support structure necessary to completely learn the language from scratch. What adult can a few years sitting around speaking and listening to a language 12+ hours a day while being able to mostly ignore their native language?
Children go to schools where they are taught and socialized in the target language. They are then able to come home and watch tv, movies and listen to music all in the target culture.
There are some other confounding issues I'm not touching, but I think you're getting to the point. The issue isn't the brain so much as it is the greater systems involved.
Dr. Levetin suggests that it's mostly around how much frustration you can handle, and how much time you think you have left vs. the amount of value you'll get from what you are learning. Procrastination, a great killer of self-education, is primarily driven by low emotional intelligence/regulation.
This is exactly what I get from this article again: the issue is not brain plasticity in learning, but the willingness to be frustrated, a desire to learn new things (we can't all be Paul Erdos) and the time to learn.