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Early Foreign Language
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| Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 | | CWK Producer |
“They are like sponges. They are not even aware that they are learning another language.”
– Martha Cala, a Spanish teacher
Three-year-old Jonathan is in his second year of taking Spanish lessons. His mother is excited about what he is learning.
“Just to have him exposed to a different culture at this age, and a different vocabulary and different words, has been really neat to see because he picks it up so fast,” says Jonathan’s mother, Lenna Applebee.
A large body of research indicates that a child’s capacity to learn a foreign language is greatest when his or her brain is still young and developing.
“They are like sponges,” says Martha Cala, Jonathan’s Spanish teacher. “They just hear it, and they start repeating what you say, and through imitation and repetition, they end up learning the language. They are not even aware that they are learning another language.”
As children reach adolescence, it becomes more difficult and confusing to separate a foreign language from a native language, some experts say. But when they are young, before their native tongue is dominant, children are able to learn more than one language with ease.
“My three children are bilingual, and they do the switch in their minds perfectly,” Cala says. “They know when to speak Spanish and when to speak English. And it’s clear to them in an instinctive way that it is two different things.”
But it’s not enough to simply introduce another language at an early age. Experts say that in order to be fluent, kids must continue studying year after year. That’s exactly what Applebee has planned for her son.
“It’s just been great to see what he’s already learned, and I can’t wait for him to continue with it,” she says.
What We Need To Know
A study from the University of Washington suggests that infants who spend more time around people who speak foreign languages are better able to develop the ability to perceive foreign language sounds. For their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers exposed 9-month-old infants from English-speaking homes to different levels of Mandarin Chinese for four weeks. Chinese-speaking people read children’s books or played with one group of children on a daily basis, while other infants were exposed to the same Chinese-speaking people through audiovisual tapes or recordings only. A third group of infants only interacted with English-speaking people. After testing the infants on their ability to distinguish between two similar Chinese phonetic sounds that don’t occur in English, researchers found that only those infants exposed to the live Chinese-speaking people could distinguish between the sounds. The researchers say their results suggest that social interaction is the key to language learning.
According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), most experts agree that a child who is exposed simultaneously to two languages at an early age will naturally learn to use both languages. However, the ASHA suggests that you keep the following possible outcomes of development in mind if your child is exposed to different languages at home on a regular basis:
- Your child can be expected to go through some periods of mixing the two languages and borrowing vocabulary to express ideas, sometimes within the same sentence. These periods occur because vocabulary may exist in one language but not in the other, or words from one language may convey a message that is not easily translated into the other language. A separation of the two languages will occur gradually.
- Your child may also experiment with the two languages to create special effects or to express himself or herself in specific settings. For example, one language may be identified as less formal and used for information about events related to home and family. The other language may be identified as more formal and used for activities outside the home. Other periods when one language is used more than the other may occur. The opposite occurs with a change in the environment.
- Your child may not be equally skilled in both languages. It is common for greater understanding to exist than actual use of one language. Less confusion will occur if your child learns to associate the two languages differently – for example, if one language is used while speaking to the mother and the other while speaking to the father.
Even with constant exposure, learning a second language can be very difficult. It requires patience and continued study even into adolescence. You can help keep your older child on track by sharing the following foreign language study tips provided by the University of Texas at Austin:
- Study every day. Language learning is cumulative – your child cannot put it off until the weekend. Focus on a different task each day.
- Encourage a good attitude. Have your child set personal goals for learning. Tell him or her to leave perfectionism at the door and that it is OK to make mistakes. Make sure your child learns from his or her mistakes.
- Make sure your child gets help if he or she needs it. Work with your child on a regular basis. Encourage study groups among friends, or hire a tutor for him or her.
Resources
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
- University of Texas at Austin
- University of Washington
