There are several advantages to knowing and learning a second language throughout your life. Research has shown that the best time to learn a second language is before you hit puberty. At this time in your life your brain is more adapt to learn and process more things. With more research being done to prove this, it is in our best efforts to start a dual language learning system. One of the earlier researchers on this topic was Lenneberg.
Lenneberg theorize that there was a critical period in an individual’s life that they could learn a second language. Lenneberg hypotheses were that the critical age for learning the second language was between early infancies and puberty. Lenneberg theory was based off of two points. The first point was that the evidence to date only showed strong learning in children before they reached puberty. His second point came from the theory that your brain matured at puberty. The maturation of the brain loses its ability for “the plasticity and reorganization capacities necessary fro acquiring language” (Johnson & Newport p. 62). Lenneberg studied native Korean or Chinese speakers that arrived in the
Lenneberg theory stated that learning a second language was easier during infancy and puberty. One reason for this is that your environment helps shape your learning. During the years that Lenneberg suggested for optimal amount of learning would be considered your leaning years. At this stage in your life, all you are doing is going to school to learn and experiencing new things. If the learning can start early in life and begin in the home, then the child will have an advantage in school. An example of this concept is a friend of mine that spoke French to his wife for an hour each day in front of his children. During this time the parents would allow the children to play among themselves while they carried on conversations. The conversations continued until they began teaching their children French. The results of the children put them ahead of their peers when they entered school.
The children of my friend will more likely have multiple advantages in life in addition to the head start they had in school. One advantage is the global possibility that comes with a second language. It is becoming more common for languages other than English to be spoken in urban
Our society is beginning to revolve around a two language environment. The known benefits of learning a second language heavily outweigh the disadvantages of not learning the second language. This raises the question of why a second language is not taught in grade school. The exercise hypothesis states that if you don’t use it, than you will lose it. The foundation that my friend gave his children can easily be lost if the education system doesn’t begin teaching foreign language at an earlier age.
1 comment:
Lenneberg's theory of a critical period for language learning seems to be somewhat hard to believe, because language acquisition itself is an accomplishment that is very difficult to understand based purely on it's magnitude, but based on his experimental findings seems plausible. When looking at Johnson and Newport's data we can clearly see that when children are relocated to a non-native speaking environment before the age of 7 they have the ability to become as proficient in grammar learning as adults which seems to be an obvious reaction. Although these children have already learned one language they are still mastering it and when submersing them in a new language it would seem to be almost impossible to not eventually learn to master another. The question is then whether or not their original language would suffer due to non-use or if their brains had already formed a concrete understanding of their native language. It seems that this critical period is a completely plausible idea and in fact the brain is much more receptive to learning language as a certain age but it also seems that later learning of a non-native language would better ensure the future fluency of both languages rather than just the use of the new non-native language. In the case of your friend's children they have the opportunity to be exposed to both french and, I'm assuming, english at home and english in school which would help them to learn and use both languages, but for children who are not given the chance to be continuously exposed to both languages it seems to me that their original language skills would inevitably suffer and although they would have some of their native language to refer to, if this critical period is taken advantage of to the degree that children are only exposed to the new non-native language it is to early in their brain's language acquisition process to have a concrete understanding to refer back to later.
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