Hola…Bonjour…Guten Tag…

Hola fellow SC200 amigos. Me llamo Sam. As a current Spanish minor, I struggle with learning all of the different vocab words, grammar structures, and phonetics of the Spanish language. Unless you are a native speaker to another language, I am sure you can relate to the struggle bus I am currently riding on. But I think it is worth the struggle. One thing I do wish is that my parents taught me Spanish when I was younger so I didn’t have to learn a new language on top of being an extremely busy college student. Why do kids learn languages faster than other age categories? What I have heard is teaching a child a language is much easier than an adult or even high school student.

One article I found to start things off claimed that the best time to teach a child another language is in their first 3-4 years of life. This is supported by learning a language is a natural process, and children typically speak at least 2,000 basic words by the age of four. During their first six months alone, babies “babble” with only 70 sounds (also known as phonemes), but these sounds make up all of the languages of the world. They will eventually learn language through these sounds, and mainly by words they pick up through their environment. One of the reasons adults struggle learning a new language over children is a number of these 70 sounds are lost because they aren’t used it that adult’s native language. Adults and even older children just don’t know how to pronounce, hear, and differentiate the unique phonemes of other languages that don’t exist in our native languaBilingual-Kidsge. A child’s most natural ability to learn is through their first three years of life (in addition to the phoneme explanation with specifically learning a language), and that is why it is easiest to learn a language then. Over 50% of a child’s ability to learn is developed in their first years of life, with another 30% developed by age 8. This is when it is easiest for children to learn things, including a second language. Therese Sullivan Caccavale, president of the National Network for Early Language Learning (NNELL) notes research done in Canada with young children showing children who are bilingual develop object identification at a younger age. This is the concept of learning that the object stays the same, but has multiple names for multiple languages.  For example: a carrot is still a carrot, and looks and tastes like a carrot, whether is it called a carrot in English or una zanahoria in Spanish.

Another study done by Ann Fatham of Stanford University tested the relationship between age and second language productive ability. The study consisted of 200 children (ages 6-15) from diverse language backgrounds, but were learning English as a second language throughout public schools in the DC area. To qualify for the study, these students had to speak their native language at home, have no previous training before entering American schools, and live in the US for less than three years. This was a good group of students because their was a variety in their native language, as well as how long they had been in America, and they all had a variety of English instruction methods because they were at a variety of public DC schools. To test the students, they were given an oral production test to test their ability to produce English morphology and syntax. The test consisted of 20 subtests, with three items in each subtest. Each subtest was focused on a particular syntax pattern. Students were then given a 1 (for a pass) or a 0 (for a fail) based on every one of their answers. In addition to the sixty oral production test, each child was told to describe a composite picture. Their answers were recorded and evaluated by linguists, who ranked them 0-5.

The results of this study indicated there was a relationship between age and the rate of learning. The results were divided by two groupings: age groups (6-10 or 11-15) and the amount of time the students had been in the US (1 year, 2 years, or 3 years). The results showed that the older group performed better on the questions (p-value<.001), regardless of how long they had been in the US. This very low p-value indicates this result was most likely not due to chance. There were no differences found in the rate of learning at the variety of different programs used to teach English. The results of the pronunciation during the composite picture description indicated that younger children did significantly better than the older children (p-value<.05). This suggests that the younger children could be learning English phonetics at a much faster rate than the older children. This makes sense when realizing that older students “lose” their phonemes, while younger children are more likely to pick up on the language. To conclude: older children performed better with syntax, yet the younger children were much better with correct English pronunciation. I personally think this is very interesting because it is concurrent with what pervious studies suggested. I also think these results are similar with native English speakers, with younger children mastering pronunciation first, and learning proper syntax when older. One part of this study that could be a confounding variable is how long students had lived in the US. If students lived in the US longer than others, they could have naturally had more time to practice learning English.

Another reason why younger kids generally have an easier time learning other languages is that they are not as cognizant of grammar structures as adults, nor are they expected to be. Martha G. Abbott, the Director of Education for the American Council on the Teach of Foreign Languages claims that one of the largest benefits to teaching a child a second language early is that younger learners are able to develop near-native pronunciation of the language. This is because children can’t properly speak English (or their native language) so they don’t let the diction and spgty_bilingual_nt_130108_wblog1eech of their first language conflict with their pronunciation of their second. Younger students are allowed to get a “pass” because they can’t pronounce a word, yet if a high school or college student made the same language mistake it would not be as easily looked over. The older one gets, the more grammar and sentence structure starts to matter, which seems to “unintentionally” penalize adults and older students when making mistakes about learning a language. This can ultimately be discouraging. Abbott also points out that younger learners are naturally more curious about learning, allowing easier engagement with the language. Younger children are also more accepting of people from other cultures or other language speakers before they are given certain stigmatisms about certain cultures and races.

One researcher who disagrees with the strength of the argument of learning a second language young is Stefka Marinova-Todd of the University of British Columbia. Marinova-Todd and her colleagues argue that there is not a “critical” period for a second language to be learned. They claim researchers have fallen victim to three fallacies. One fallacy is a misinterpretation of observations that young children tend to pick up another language. This is when they are actually unsophisticated and immature, while also lacking certain cognitive skills (that could significantly help in acquiring a second language).  One study done to prove this was conducted by Harvard professor Catherine Snow. She studied English speakers learning Dutch of different age groups. Study size? The study concluded that 12-15 year olds did better than younger children. Another fallacy is some researchers report differences of brain organization in early and late second language learners when there are none. In actuality, a second language is acquired through the same neurological configurations responsible for acquiring the first language. The last fallacy is the rate of failure. Older people admittedly “fail” learning a language, but this is due to other factors such as energy, input, motivation,language-learning time, etc. This can also be logically supported because younger children are more likely to be “pushed to learn a language through parents, classes, tutoring, and rewards from parents or teachers. Adults have less motivation and must self-motivate themselves, which can make it seem “harder” for them to learn another language. This could potentially be a confounding variable for adults to learn, because this may make it seem like they aren’t as capable of learning, when really they are just less motivated. This article is concluded reminding people that the majority of bilingual children start monolingual, and while learning as a child is not proved to be not easier, it is also very possible and can even be simple for older people (of any age really) to learn a language. Basically, don’t let not being an infant or a toddler deter one from not learning a language.

To conclude: countless studies suggest that learning a language young is more beneficial, and it seems like it truly is more beneficial to learn a language young. That being said, Marinova-Todd still offers very interesting (and frankly not talked about) data and opinion to support that learning a language young is not the only way and time to learn a language. Overall, no matter what age, one should not be less motivated because they fear societal embarrassment (example: not knowing all grammatical structures and having a hard time with pronunciation). YOU CAN DO IT!