Second Language Learning in Children

Children have an innate ability to acquire speech, which can help them learn a foreign language.

Children learn their first spoken language naturally, without studying it. There are a number of theories regarding second language learning in children, and questions remain about the stage at which they are able to learn a foreign language through the same natural acquisition they use to learn their first language. There is also a great deal of debate about bilingual education and whether learning a foreign language too early is detrimental to acquiring the native language.

Child and Adult Learners

As anyone who has studied French or Japanese later in life knows, learning a foreign language is difficult and requires a great deal of practice and repetition. However, some children who are exposed to a second or even a third language seem to pick up the language fairly easily without studying. Many linguists believe this is because children are hard-wired to adopt spoken language through "natural acquisition," much like they learn their first language, while adults usually study through rote memorization or other academic exercises to pick up a second language.

Acquisition Through Personal Interaction

Linguists believe that children learn spoken language "naturalistically" through personal interaction with people, such as their parents, who speak to them. But many researchers hold that children will not learn any language by being exposed to it on television or radio. For example, an English-speaking child who hears a caretaker regularly speak Spanish to them is likely to pick up the Spanish that she hears but may not learn anything from a computer language program designed to teach them French. This helps explain why children who have parents of different native languages usually acquire both.

Universal Grammar

That children can acquire a second language as they do their first speaks to the notion of "universal grammar," a theory posited by linguist Noam Chomsky that suggests that all languages have fundamental similarities and, therefore, people can adopt any language at the appropriate developmental stages of their lives. For example, an American child who is just learning to talk can just as easily learn Mandarin Chinese as English. Many linguists believe that children can also, therefore, learn two languages simultaneously.

Simultaneous Acquisition

When people refer to "second language acquisition" in children, they often mean "simultaneous language acquisition"--commonly known as bilingualism--because children are still learning their "first" language at certain stages. It is still unclear when a child's first language is "in place" and another language would be seen as "second," but it is generally conceived to be between the ages of 3 and 9, with many linguists citing the age of 5. After this stage, a child learning another language would be undergoing "second language acquisition."

Pros and Cons of Bilingualism

Children who are exposed to a second language very early may confuse the two languages and engage in "code switching," using the vocabulary of one language when speaking another. This usually ceases to be an issue as children develop and learn to differentiate the different languages. Still, children who are immersed or, at least, have regular interaction with a spoken foreign language will easily acquire that language until sometime in their teenage years. So early exposure may not be necessary, defeating the common myth that "the earlier, the better." Regardless of what age a child starts learning a second language, however, it must be learned naturalistically.

References

• Linguistic Soceity of America: Language Acquisition
• On Language and Culture: Noam Chomsky interviewed by Wiktor Osiatynski
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Second Language Acquisition, Tania Ionin
• National Science Foundation: Language Acquisition
• Code-Switching, Roberto R. Heredia and Jeffrey M. Brown, Texas A & M International University