You hear all the time how much easier it is to learn a second language the younger you are. And for children, it seems almost effortless. But if the parents don’t speak another language, is it even worth it to teach a child a second language?
One way would be to send the kid to classes. But that doesn’t sound like very much fun for the kid. Plus how much retention would there be when they are only exposed to the language for a few hours a week.
Another way would be videos or computer games. But again there would be the problem of retention if the kid doesn’t watch the programs all the time.
So then is it even worth it? There are benefits to knowing a second language and kids learn languages easily, but it seems they wouldn’t remember it if they were not exposed to it on a regular basis.
Does anyone have any experience with this? Where the parents only spoke one language but the kid learned a second language effectively?
Learning a second language offers many benefits, and if it’s something you can give your child without making major sacrifices you ought to go for it.
I taught English in Taiwan for ten years, mostly to kids whose parents spoke little or no English. The kids whose parents did speak English with them at home generally made much more progress, but fluency isn’t the only goal in foreign language teaching. Learning another language gives you a perspective on your own language and thought processes - another way of organizing your thinking. Broadens the mind much like foreign travel.
Myself, I don’t have a gift for language learning beyond being fairly good with pronunciation, but growing up in a bilingual (German/English) household and then learning some French, and later Chinese, has been beneficial to me.
As for effective learning, I think there’s no substiute for immersion. Hearing and using a language takes it out of the context of the classroom and makes it a natural part of your life. This isn’t always possible, though.
A real, live teacher in a classroom with other kids is second best. The academic approach never worked well on me, but some kids do very well and a good teacher can make the experience fun and rewarding even if the result isn’t fluency.
Videos and other materials make for good experience in addition to exposure and classroom work. They’re involving and motivating, but promote listening and reading skills more than speaking and writing.
Providing as many of these opportunities as you can, without pushing the child too hard and keeping enjoyment a priority, will certainly not do any harm.
Good luck!
They say the best way to learn is immersion, where you have to sink or swim. Put the tyke into a day care where another language is spoken, and he will have to pick it up. Sounds cruel, but it happens every day to kids who change countries, and they seem to make a go of it.
One advantage to giving a young child exposure to foreign languages is that even if they don’t grow up fluent, they may likely be more proficient in the language if they opt to study it later in life. I was exposed as a child to a foreign language, studied it later in life, and have perpetually been told that my accent is authentic. I attribute this to exposure during my “critical period.”
Over here every kid learns at least three foreign languages (English, French and German), though most only retain a fiar commandment of English. Whether the parents speak foreign language doesn’t really matter for the proficiency of the children. However, it is true that regular practice is an important factor. Because of the preponderance of American/English television and movies (all subtitled) most children are subjected to a steady barrage of the language.
Hence if you pick a language it should be one that the child has some opportunity to speak in his environment. Still, even if you tend to forget specifics, I agree with the other posters that it may have other beneficial effects beside immediate fluency. I guess it still beats computer games for sheer educational value.
I picked up spanish from the lady who took care of me (I hate to refer to Mrs. L as day care for some reason, she was my extra mom). I’ve forgotten my spanish and picked it up again a couple of times. It was always easier to get back into spanish than it would have been learning it for the first time. French was a bear when I first studied it in high school and I’m still not anywhere near fluent, for example.
Foreign language experience has helped me get nearly every job I’ve ever had and was a life saver once I had them. Besides, who says the parents couldn’t study that second language right alongside the kids? Think how much fun could be had speaking only a foreign language during dinner or having French only weekends around the house!
It is always a good idea, and you never know, mom & dad may need an interpreter sometime!
My dad had taken a little German in HS, and when I was deciding on my language requirement (I’d already had Spanish in JHS), we decided on German so we could work on it together. It was pretty cool, Dad picked up a lot considering he wasn’t in the classroom and I didn’t do much homework!
I want to get my Spanish back, and it wouldn’t be too hard.
I think that it’s worth teaching, as at least you can learn a little bit. However, IMHO, it’s only the kids who have parents who speak the language or who have another chance to actually use it in real life that can really attain any form of fluency.
It is extremely valuable to expose young children extensively to a second language, regardless of whether the parents speak it or not. As others have mentioned, start young enough, and it becomes an additional first language, more or less. Children are quite capable of learning more than one first language.
Furthermore, there’s evidence to suggest that being able to access more than one grammar may make it easier to acquire subsequent languages.
I wish I had been exposed to a lot more French during my critical period.
I would have given anything to grow up with a second language, for real! I didn’t start formal second language instruction until age 13, and I’ve learned quite a bit since, but there’s no substitute for learning before puberty. I’ve always read that people who learn a language after puberty almost never manage to attain accent-free speech. Even if the kids forget a lot afterward, it’s still way worth it.
Plus I’m a firm believer that kids who are exposed to a second language early on, even if they don’t become fluent, will have an easier time learning other languages later, because they have been exposed to other ways of structuring their thoughts. Plus learning another language does wonders for comprehension of grammatical structure in one’s native language.
I have a nephew (who is three) who I speak to, probably about 60% of the time, in Spanish. He can reply so is obviously picking up the odd word here and there.
I also speak to my niece (who is six) in French occasionally. I like the idea of giving them a (bit of a) start in another language, even if I don’t see them often enough to make a massive difference. Their parents (my sis and BIL) don’t speak any other languages, so I feel it is good to have them at least experience how other people in other cultures communicate, even if they are still too young to fully appreciate the reasoning.
I’ve read that very young children have perfect pitch and can distinguish between a lot of phonemes (say, recognising the hindi t), but once they grow older, they only retain the abilities used by the language(s) they’ve been exposed to.
I learned english and french from my family, and they really did both become first languages for me.
It was a big deal to me when I was learning to read in both english and french, that a letter followed different rules in each languages. It was funny to hear me read unfamiliar words for a while, my pronunciation was pretty random. My brother had a period of adding extra "e"s to english words ending with a consonant, and applying the rules from one language to the other. We got over it, aparently it’s pretty common, and it didn’t mean we were heading for trouble. Some parents (including ours) panic over this sort of thing, though.
I only really appreciated having two first languages when I started working on danish as an adult. From the beginning, I’ve had a little trouble picking up grammar, I though that was the easy part of learning a language. My husband learned english (from danish) as a teenager, and while his vocabulary is large, he still has trouble remembering that verbs need to be conjugated.
I notice the same thing with my co-workers and friends, unilinguals learning/having learned a second language as adults have a lot more trouble with the grammar. One of my co-workers learned basic english as a child, and I have to remind myself that he doesn’t have as large a vocabulary as I think, as he has a clear accent and correct grammar. I’m also surprised the other way, how large a vocabulary someone who can’t get the word order right seems to have.
