All researchers agree that the earlier a child starts learning a second language, the better, for more reasons than one. Some researchers say that second language acquisition skills peak at or before the age of 6 or 7. Others claim that this window extends through puberty. But, they all agree that it’s much harder for a child beyond puberty to learn a new language.
Why start at the age of 3 or 4?
If you asked that question some years ago, everybody would look at you as if you were an alien. It was inconceivable for children as young as three years of age to be able to learn a second language, given that they have not yet mastered their mother tongue. Nowadays, though, research findings indicate something totally different.
Studies by Harvard University confirm that the creativity, critical thinking skills, and flexibility of the mind are significantly enhanced if children learn a second language at a younger age. Preschool years, especially the first three years of life, are believed to be a vital period in a child’s life. This is when the foundations for attitudes, thinking, and learning, among others, are laid down.
This means that children have a natural ability to learn, which is developed during the first 3-4 years of their life.
Using that ability is much encouraged because, always according to research, learning a second language is as easy as learning the first.
It may sound like a huge burden, but, in fact, it’s not.
The human brain is a wonderful thing. From the moment we are born, we learn by six main ways, by:
- Sight
- Taste
- Smell
- Sound
- Touch
- Doing
Based on the information we gain in our first few years, everything we have learned grows later in life. 50% of our ability to learn is developed by age 4 and another 30% by age 8. This is why three-year-olds are encouraged to learn a second language.
However, this doesn’t mean that 80% of one’s knowledge or intelligence is formed until they are 8 years old. It simply means that children develop their main learning pathways during their first few years of life.
The younger the learner, the more they can adopt pronunciations and recreate new sounds. And, children around the age of three or four can learn through play because their minds aren’t yet overwhelmed by facts and information that needs to be stored and assessed, which is something that happens as we grow older.
Bilingual children that learn a second language from an early age sound like a native in both.
After the teen years, the brain changes and makes it extremely challenging (if possible at all) for an adult to learn a foreign language. This doesn’t mean that they can’t learn it; just that they won’t do so the same way as a child because the mechanisms that help language learning are not the same as they are at ages 2-5.
Another interesting fact is that children learn a second language better if they picked it up in their communities of families, rather than the classroom.
And, besides the added fluency, bilingual children not only speak two languages sooner than other single-language peers but are also better in tasks that call for a shift in attention. Also, research has demonstrated that children who first mastered their mother tongue and then learned a second language became fluent in the foreign language but never managed to attain the level of excellence of those that learned both languages in one go.
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