A myth, in one of its senses, is a belief about something that is shared by many people, but which in fact happens to be untrue or only partly true. The field of language learning is full of myths and misconceptions, possibly because every literate person has been successful at learning at least one language and so may consider himself to be something of an expert on the topic. The myth that I wish to discuss in the present article is that young children are the best learners of a second language. This is a widely-held belief that contains an element of truth, but which for the most part has been disproved by recent linguistic research (see references at the foot of this page).