By Dana DeMercurio
When is the best time to teach your child a foreign language? What if we told you it was before he was even born?
According to MultilingualChildren.Org, new technology has allowed researchers to determine that infants in the womb acquire fundamental verbal skills even before uttering their first word.
Behavioral and neurological researches alike have found that second language acquisition is most effective when taking place during the critical developmental learning period between the ages of birth to puberty. Within this age range, exposure also affects the way language is represented in the brain, with similarities between the behavioral and neural effects.
“Children need to be exposed to a different language for at least 30 percent of their waking hours to become bilingual.” says Fred Genesee, a professor of psycholinguistics at McGill University in Montreal. “Less exposure may allow the child to comprehend but not speak a second language. Learning a second language is simple for children, relative to adults,” he said. “But it won’t happen overnight.”
Adding a second language to your child’s early learning routine isn’t as hard as you might think, especially if the desired second language is already spoken by parents, relatives, playmates or those in their community. Since the brain is primed the first three years of life with peak neural ways to mediate language, children are able to absorb second or third languages at a phenomenal rate.
Learning a second language outside of the critical period is often less certain and more erratic in its outcomes. Starting older kids on a second language requires more effort on the child’s behalf. Parents should encourage their kids by pointing out the several advantages of this unique ability, like having a secret second language!
Regardless of when your child starts a foreign language, be sure to nurture their skills and encourage them at any age to expand their cultural horizon through language learning. Below are some products that can help you with this!
