The best age to learn a second language

The best age to learn a second language

The best age to learn a foreign language is during infancy. At birth the human brain is wired to learn language, though not any particular language. A baby can just as easily learn English as Chinese, French as easily as Hopi. It is the baby's early experiences that modify the brain, influencing it to be able to learn one language as easily as another. This means the best time to learn a foreign language is during the first few weeks of the baby's life.......

 The reason this is the best age to learn a foreign language stems from the way the human brain is structured. This can be seen early in the first few months when a baby begins to babble. At first the babbling includes every sound a human is capable of making. As time goes on, the baby's babbling becomes focused on sounds that she hears in her environment. The child who is surrounded by English will mimic the phonic of English, and the baby who is surrounded by Chinese will learn the phonic and tones of this language.

The baby who is surrounded by both will babble in both languages, and will have begun her journey towards learning both languages. Thus, the best age to learn a foreign language starts when the baby is born and continues through to the babbling stage. The older a child is the more difficult it is to learn a second language.

There is a significant difference between how the brain of the early second language learner processes two languages and those that learn a second language at an older age. The brain of the child raised in a bilingual environment has separate areas to process each of the languages, while the brain of the later second language learner is not able to so fully discriminate between the two languages.

When the child is raised from infancy in a bilingual environment she may seem to have a speech delay, falling behind her age peers in language skills. However, by the time the child is 5 not only will her language abilities catch up to that of her peers, but she will also know two languages with equal proficiency.

Being fully bilingual is a tremendous skill to acquire at a young age. Typically, the American child is raised to only be truly proficient in English, while their peers in other countries have been learning two or three languages. The isolation of most of the United States from countries that speak other languages has played a big part in this. In today's global economy learning a second language has become increasingly important.

So, infancy is the best time to start learning a second language. Learning a second language at this age not only creates the optimal brain structure, but also makes it easier to learn additional languages as the child gets older. Exposing your child to a second language at a young age is one of the greatest gifts you can give her.