Raising a Bilingual Child
Parents Can Teach Their Children a Foreign Language at a Young Age
Oct 19, 2007
It’s clear that by adulthood, there is a definite advantage of knowing how to speak a foreign language. But should parents add foreign language instruction to an already long list of skills being taught to their children at a young age?
Yes, experts say.
Young children are far better equipped to pick up a foreign language than older youth, and those who learn a foreign language beginning in early childhood have some cognitive advantages over children who don’t, according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
Research conducted in Canada with young children shows that those who are bilingual develop the concept of “object permanence” at an earlier age, according to Therese Sullivan Caccavale, president of the National Network for Early Language Learning. Bilingual students learn sooner that an object remains the same, even though the object has a different name in another language.
“All human beings are naturally, innately able to learn a foreign language as a child,” says Dr. Geoffrey S. Koby, associate professor of German Translation at Kent State University.
By age 12 or early teens – the time when foreign language instruction often begins in public schools – a child’s language acquisition skills have peaked and are on the downturn, Koby said in a telephone interview on Oct. 11.
Learning a language is not knowledge; it’s a skill, said Dr. Koby. “It’s not like history or geography,” he said. “It’s more like math or a sport, because it takes practice to master.”
To learn a language, a child has to speak it and use it regularly. “Repetition is the key,” Dr. Koby said. A parent teaching a child a foreign language should remember the N+1 method: Start with what you know and work on one step beyond that.
As very young children, human beings can easily learn a language, since that’s when they learn their native tongue, Dr. Koby said. Children have “language acquisition devices” that allow them to easily learn sounds, language patterns and accents, and retain that information.
By age 12 or 13, that ability begins to turn off, Dr. Koby says. Yet that is the age when foreign languages begin offering foreign language classes in middle schools.
Choosing a Language
You may want to choose a language that is widely used in the area in which you live, or the language of your heritage, Dr. Koby said. If neither of those drive you, choose a language widely used throughout the world, such as French, Italian, German or Spanish. Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic, Japanese and Russian are also languages in demand.
Teaching Foreign Language at Home
Ideally, bilingual parents use both languages around their children from birth and the children grow up learning a foreign language without formal instruction, Dr. Koby said.
If that’s not the case, there are instructional materials for at-home foreign language instruction that should be started by about age 4 or 5. Dr. Koby said he used Muzzy: The BBC Language Course for Children with his own five children, who learned German.
Auro-log, a language learning software company, recommends a good start is anywhere from age 4 to 12. The company offers software for children to learn the language along with their parents.
Language Camps
Concordia Language Villages offer several weeks of language immersion camps in Minnesota, in any of 15 different foreign languages. Children from age 7 to 18 are immersed in the language and culture of a particular country while at the camp. Their money is exchanged for the local currency and they play games, eat meals and participate in customs fitting the culture of the language they’re learning.
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