In the last few years, unable to hold a list of just four grocery items in my head, I’d begun to fret a bit over my literal state of mind. So to reassure myself that nothing was amiss, just before tackling French I took a cognitive assessment called CNS Vital Signs, recommended by a psychologist friend. The results were anything but reassuring: I scored below average for my age group in nearly all of the categories, notably landing in the bottom 10th percentile on the composite memory test and in the lowest 5 percent on the visual memory test.

在那之前的几年里，我脑袋里常常连只有四件物品的杂货购物单都存不下，于是我开始真真切切地有些担心自己头脑的状态。所以，为了宽慰自己什么都没有出差错，我在研习法语之前，遵从一位心理学家朋友的建议，做了一种名叫计算机化神经认知评估(CNS Vital Signs)的测验。结果完全无法让我宽慰：我在所有科目中的成绩，都低于我所在的年龄分组的平均值，尤其值得关注的是，综合记忆测验的成绩跌倒了最后10%，视觉记忆测验成绩跌到了最后5%。

This, obviously, did not bode well for my nascent language project, but I forged ahead. To be sure, learning a foreign language is a daunting task for any adult. How can something that a toddler accomplishes before learning to tie his shoes be so difficult for grown-ups?

这对我刚刚开始的语言计划，显然并不是什么好兆头，但我还是坚定地前进了。当然，学习外语对于任何一个成年人都是艰巨任务。那为什么幼童们在系鞋带都还没学会的时候就能做到的事情，对成年人来说就如此困难呢？

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