The way people learn languages changes as they grow older. There’s a profound difference between the way a child learns its first, native language and the way adults and teenagers learn a second or further language.
Children are born with an ability to absorb a language without the least effort. First language acquisition happens naturally, as part of the child’s development. Just as babies first sit, then crawl, toddle, walk and run, so they also first coo, then babble, make mini-sentences and finally develop full mastery of their native language.
Linguists believe that this is ability is due to pre-programming in the brain of the developing child, which means that a child’s language acquisition abilities are innate.
The problem is that the programming only seems to work for a relatively short period of time, specifically from birth up until the age of about eleven, or at least before puberty starts.
If you want or need to learn a language after that age, you have to employ different learning strategies that involve your conscious brain. You need to learn specifically how the language you are learning works and you need to memorise its vocabulary.
Another point to consider, and it may cheer you up, is that a child has had around 40,000 hours exposure to its native language by the age of eleven – so it has had a lot of input, and that level of exposure is going to be difficult to replicate as an adult or teenager, so you should be very proud of whatever level of competence you achieve in a second or further language!
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HOW PEOPLE LEARN / How Children Learn / How Adults and Teenagers Learn
