What is the essay's main argument?

An accent is not failure; being understood easily is the real goal. (The essay says an accent is not evidence of weak learning, and that the useful goal is to be understood without effort.)

In the first year, what does the essay say an adult usually gains faster than a child?

Vocabulary and grammar (Paragraph two: an adult gains vocabulary and grammar faster, because an adult already knows how languages behave.)

According to the essay, why is pronunciation the hard part for adults?

Their ear has spent years sorting sounds by the rules of the first language. (Sounds that were never meaningful in the first language are hard to hear, so the trained ear, not effort or shyness, is the obstacle.)

"What resists is pronunciation." Resists here means

does not give way to effort (The sentences after it explain why pronunciation stays difficult, so 'resists' means it holds out against work.)

The Adult Accent: Level 3 Reading Comprehension Questions

Adults who learn a second language often judge themselves by the wrong measure. They compare their accent to a native speaker's, decide they have failed, and ignore everything they have actually built.

The comparison is unfair in both directions. In the first year, an adult usually gains vocabulary and grammar faster than a child does, because an adult already knows how languages behave and can study on purpose. What resists is pronunciation. The ear has spent decades sorting sounds into the categories of the first language, and sounds that were never meaningful there are hard to hear, let alone reproduce.

So an accent is not evidence of weak learning. It is a record of the first language still doing its job.

The useful goal is not to erase it but to be understood without effort: to put the stress on the right syllable, to keep the rhythm of the sentence, to say the small endings that carry grammar. Listeners forgive an accent quickly. They forgive an unclear stressed syllable far more slowly.

Comprehension questions