Parents of toddlers and children of kindergarten age worry about the proper education of their kids and wonder when it is the right time for them to be introduced to  a foreign language. They are afraid that toddlers who do not know their own language very well will end up confused if they start a foreign  language. This fear is not new and it extends to educators, teachers  and researchers as well. In the past there were quite a few people who believed that the second language indeed causes confusion to kids and affects their lexical and conceptual development. This view weakened when the early research, based on observations of bilingual students and  manifestations of their school life, showed that  bilinguals outdo monolinguals.  (Peal and Lambert, 1962).  

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Researchers  focused on bilingual children. They studied environments in which parents of different nationalities had decided to communicate with their kids in their mother tongue only and  had remained  stable in their choice. For example, the dad uses the Greek and the mum  the English language when addressing the child. The aim in these environments is that the child communicates in different language codes  from a very early age and always in a stable manner. For example, the child uses Greek with Daddy and English with mummy. Ultimately the child choses his “mother” tongue on the basis of the language he hears more often and feels more comfortable with. Studies on the language development of children nurtured in bilingual environments show that some problems which appear to toddlers, before they  begin to speak, dissolve when they become 36 months old and the  children are able to  communicate in both language codes with the same ease. (Baker,2000). Eventually, it appears that the second language  has a positive influence on the mother tongue since it reinforces the linguistic development of the child    (Kecskes & Papp, 2000).  

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Dr. Bialystok  reports that there is no indication to support the myth that the learning of a second language in the early years causes blocking and learning difficulties. To the contrary, children  who are introduced  early to a foreign language score high in psychological tests planned to test their intellectual aptitude.  The  “Stroop test”  and the “Simon task”, which give to the kids contradictory  information and ask them to process contradictory perceptual information, published at the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology,  indicate that bilingual children systematically outscore monolingual even in mathematical and logical skills. 

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Undoubtedly, even the most skeptical parents know that the learning process starts with the birth of their children, continues when they are enrolled in the first grade of Primary school and continues for the rest of their lives. What we need to remember is that according to the experts’ findings,  a child’s  brain is very much like a sponge until the third year of its life and that the child absorbs languages as long as we speak slowly, clearly and with a lot of repetitions. The informal introduction to the foreign language through speaking cards, stories, songs, poems and rhymes helps children unconsciously develop their listening skills, accent, coordination, rhythm and structure while singing, repeating and being entertained. Children adore the newly discovered sounds and the music and so it is not too early to expose them to the foreign language from the third year of their lives. Their flair in learning, their ability to imitate and copy the proper articulation,  help toddlers’ phonological awareness and speech development.  Bilingual environments consistently prove  that little kids acquire fantastic pronunciation of the words they hear and this helps their speech unfold. 

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Understandably parents are concerned in embarking in an immersion program, especially when their knowledge of English and mainly their accent is not  what they would like it to be. They should, however,  not be concerned. First, the little ones simply adore their parents’ voice and secondly parents can simply repeat what they hear from the material suggested on YouTube. So, parents themselves “improve” their accent by doing the exact same thing their child is asked to do. Instead of looking for magical recipes, parents should create their own depending on their needs and perceptions. 

 

Recommended reading or watching. 

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• www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22750568 Adult Brain Grows with Language Learning, the journal NeuroImage, on brain growth and brain elasticity when learning a foreign language. 

• Clawson, Mellisa A. Play of language-minority children in an early childhood setting.  American Psychological Association