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This is an article I wanted to share with you due to some people�s interest in teaching babies and very young children. Hope you find it interesting.
How
Do Kids Become Bilingual So Easily?
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
,
AP
WASHINGTON (July 21) � The best time to learn a foreign language: Between birth
and age 7. Missed that window?
New research is showing just how children �s brains can become bilingual so easily,
findings that scientists hope eventually could help the rest of us learn a new
language a bit easier.
"We think the magic that kids apply to this learning situation, some of
the principles, can be imported into learning programs for adults," says
Dr. Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington, who is part of an
international team now trying to turn those lessons into more teachable
technology.
Each language uses a unique set of sounds. Scientists now know babies are born
with the ability to distinguish all of them, but that ability starts weakening
even before they start talking, by the first birthday.
Kuhl offers an example: Japanese doesn �t distinguish between the "L"
and "R" sounds of English � "rake" and "lake"
would sound the same. Her team proved that a 7-month-old in Tokyo and a
7-month-old in Seattle respond equally well to those different sounds. But by
11 months, the Japanese infant had lost a lot of that ability.
Time out � how do you test a baby? By tracking eye gaze. Make a fun toy appear
on one side or the other whenever there �s a particular sound. The baby quickly
learns to look on that side whenever he or she hears a brand-new but similar
sound. Noninvasive brain scans document how the brain is processing and imprinting
language.
Mastering your dominant language gets in the way of learning a second, less
familiar one, Kuhl �s research suggests. The brain tunes out sounds that don �t
fit.
"You �re building a brain architecture that �s a perfect fit for Japanese or
English or French," whatever is native, Kuhl explains � or, if you �re a
lucky baby, a brain with two sets of neural circuits dedicated to two
languages.
It �s remarkable that babies being raised bilingual � by simply speaking to them
in two languages � can learn both in the time it takes most babies to learn
one. On average, monolingual and bilingual babies start talking around age 1
and can say about 50 words by 18 months.
Children age 4 and younger account for more than half of all bathtub- and
shower-related injuries? A study in the August issue of the journal Pediatrics
found that such accidents send 120 kids to emergency rooms in the U.S. every
day. About 60 percent of the injuries were cuts. The most commonly affected
area was the head, which accounted for nearly 50 percent of tub injuries.
Italian researchers wondered why there wasn �t a delay, and reported this month
in the journal Science that being bilingual seems to make the brain more
flexible.
The researchers tested 44 12-month-olds to see how they recognized
three-syllable patterns � nonsense words, just to test sound learning. Sure
enough, gaze-tracking showed the bilingual babies learned two kinds of patterns
at the same time � like lo-ba-lo or lo-lo-ba � while the one-language babies
learned only one, concluded Agnes Melinda Kovacs of Italy �s International
School for Advanced Studies.
While new language learning is easiest by age 7, the ability markedly declines
after puberty.
"We �re seeing the brain as more plastic and ready to create new circuits
before than after puberty," Kuhl says. As an adult, "it �s a totally
different process. You won �t learn it in the same way. You won �t become (as
good as) a native speaker."
Yet a soon-to-be-released survey from the Center for Applied Linguistics, a
nonprofit organization that researches language issues, shows U.S. elementary
schools cut back on foreign language instruction over the last decade. About a
quarter of public elementary schools were teaching foreign languages in 1997,
but just 15 percent last year, say preliminary results posted on the center �s
Web site.
What might help people who missed their childhood window? Baby brains need
personal interaction to soak in a new language � TV or CDs alone don �t work. So
researchers are improving the technology that adults tend to use for language
learning, to make it more social and possibly tap brain circuitry that tots
would use.
Recall that Japanese "L" and "R" difficulty? Kuhl and
scientists at Tokyo Denki University and the University of Minnesota helped develop
a computer language program that pictures people speaking in
"motherese," the slow exaggeration of sounds that parents use with
babies.
Japanese college students who �d had little exposure to spoken English underwent
12 sessions listening to exaggerated "Ls" and "Rs" while
watching the computerized instructor �s face pronounce English words. Brain
scans � a hair dryer-looking device called MEG, for magnetoencephalography �
that measure millisecond-by-millisecond activity showed the students could better
distinguish between those alien English sounds. And they pronounced them
better, too, the team reported in the journal NeuroImage.
"It �s our very first, preliminary crude attempt but the gains were
phenomenal," says Kuhl.
But she �d rather see parents follow biology and expose youngsters early. If you
speak a second language, speak it at home. Or find a play group or caregiver
where your child can hear another language regularly.
"You �ll be surprised," Kuhl says. "They do seem to pick it up
like sponges."
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
2009-07-21 17:22:49
My child is bilingual (french/english) and whenever we can we also read books in spanish and indonesian as well and he loves it!! he keeps asking me to read these sort of books and I can see how it uses words on his own when playing (he counts, calls animals different names..) What I am trying to say is that ok it is great to be brought up in a bilingual home (like mine) but the awareness to languages even without the constant flow of that language is important and not many people think about it: it is so easy (now you have to have a good accent to read these books!!) Kids are multilingual at birth they narrow down the sounds possibilities little by little but as parents we can help them keep a wider range of sounds. As teachers it is not possible because we are not in contact enough! (and thank god for that!!!!!)
My child is bilingual too (Czech/French) and it was and is amazing to watch the way he uses the two languages. At the beginning he always chose the language in which the word was easier to remember and pronounce so in one sentence he would use two words in Czech and three in French. But it was surprising to see how quickly he understood that he should speak a different language to his mum and a different one to his father.
Now he is 6 years old and he corrects me old the time (when I speak French of course)!I have another child who doesn�t speak yet so I wonder if the process of using the two languages will be the same :-)
All my children speak both German and English, a couple were starting to get pretty good at Italian when we lived there (they were very young), but lost all of it am year or two after returning to Germany. My youngest daughter refused to let us speak Italian to her, that was only for her Italian friends and babysitters to do (she was 3 years old).
