Just 16 days after conception, the neural plate (which eventually folds into the various compartments of the brain) starts developing, and by week 6/7, one can find visible signs of a rapidly growing human brain in a fetus. This expeditious development of the brain denotes why we have a plethora of thoughts whirling in the hustle-bustle of the mental town up there. Just like stuffing too much into a jar would cause it to explode, similarly, having too much in our heads with absolutely no medium to disseminate them would result in clouding of ideas and as a consequence, in a mental conundrum. Therefore, some wise mind came up with the idea to introduce a set of alphabets which could be joined to form words, which would then be glued together to form phrases & idioms, which could then be used in a sentence. Language was, thus, evolved through a seemingly simple yet complex process aimed at arming the society with a tool to communicate their deepest thoughts and the most intense emotions they feel.

As complicated as it can seem, language training is recommended, and is, in most cases, begun at a very early age, where interacting with family is the primary source of acquiring the fundamentals of a language. Frequent conversations held with peers, neighbors & relatives is yet another way of how a child acquaints their tongue with the lexicons of a language and perfects the way of saying what ‘exactly’ they want.

Breakthrough in Child Mental Health Research

But like many children who forget numbers while counting and thus struggle with mathematics as a subject for a while, there are also children who have a hard time trying to find the right words to express themselves clearly. This ensues as a result of ‘not-so stimulating’ language training at an early age. Language skills children possess early in their life can predict the likelihood that they may experience depression. University of Missouri investigators discovered that children who experience low levels of language learning stimulation beginning at three years of age are more likely to experience language delays by first grade. The children are then three times more likely to develop depression by third grade. Researchers discovered falling behind on language can lead to social and academic deficits by the first grade. Thereafter, chances are they will continue to fall further behind in school each year, which can lead to negative self-perceptions and depressive symptoms by third grade.

Remedy for Malady?

To rescue a child from drowning under the feelings of self-deprecation and dejection, a parent and/or teacher should introduce them to the whole new world of linguistic literacy. Kids can experience language via a variety of sources. While some probable options could be through interactions with parents and siblings, one easy yet amazingly effective, promising, and  rewarding choice is engaging them in consuming media such as television and/or books. Books would not only ensure exposure to greater amounts of language and vocabulary that will help prepare children to succeed socially, but would also educate the child on a multitude of topics, thus, empowering their little brain with an intellectual capacity and passion so strong that would later help them excel academically in school. Language skills training, both rudimentary and advanced, must be incorporated into the school curriculum, with extra care being taken of slow-learners or learners with grasping difficulty. Parents, here, have the bigger role to play. Charity begins at home and hence, a conducive environment must be created by parents to encourage their young wards to learn and thus, eliminate the future possibility of raising a depressed kid and eventually, an even more depressed & withdrawn adult.

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“The limits of my language are the limits of my world“

Language is like oxygen. Oxygen is essential for human survival but can also aid conflagration to burgeon. Similarly, language could empower a kid to exercise their freedom of uninhibited communication, but the inability to use it properly could drastically affect a child’s mental health.

The renowned philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is recorded to have said, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world”. Going literally, one can clearly figure out that incompetence in a language could not only make a kid vulnerable to social disparage & outcasting from the social mainstream, but could potentially hinder a child’s growth. For every child has within them a mysteriously beautiful universe of intelligent queries, and sometimes, clever food for thoughts, awaiting the opportunity to express them.

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Exposure to such diversity at a young age may be incredibly beneficial in creating open-minded and diverse youth, but it may also confuse the child and create a lacking sense of identity and belonging. Learning one’s native language, particularly in the early years of childhood, can combat this.

Why Is Learning Native Languages So Important?

[dropcapFor one, in many communities, be it Native American communities in the US or small tribal communities in parts of Africa, native languages are dying at an alarmingly quick rate. The long-term effects of colonization and assimilation have ridden many such communities of their native tongue, and unfortunately socioeconomic circumstances today have not made the task of resurrecting such languages any easier.

There is also the benefit of bilingualism/multilingualism with regards to intellect and academic capacity, particularly for children in the early years of their life. Research has been done surrounding the role bilingualism plays in developing the executive control system of the brain, the section of the brain which monitors and controls multi-tasking, concentration, and the ability to process several different thoughts at once.  The benefits of learning a new language in terms of intellectual development are clearly existing and important, however, what is significant is the personal and communal benefits of learning a native language.

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In communities where the culture and native language is endangered, teaching children, who are often more apt at picking up languages, will help protect and restore dying languages. The Native American community, along with other communities around the world that have suffered at the hands of colonialism, continue to face several large hardships. These include unemployment, substance abuse, and mental health problems. A lot of these stem from a loss of identity and culture, things that were shunned for years under suppressive regimes. By teaching children their native tongues, a sense of identity and belonging is being instilled, simultaneously teaching them to accept and be proud of their heritage and upbringing.

The Importance of Language in Native American Communities

With a growing number of Native American language immersion programs in the US, there are two significant benefits emerging regarding 1) an increasing number of Native American language speakers, which aids in saving and restoration of such ancient languages, and 2) it allows many high-risk youth from difficult backgrounds to overcome their socioeconomic circumstances and to excel.

Many children lack interest in their education because they’re missing some degree of personal connection to the things they’re learning. By introducing them to their native language and perhaps even instructing them in their native language, these children find a personal connection with their learning. This connection can harness itself to a greater appreciation for one’s culture and education, and foster a positive relationship with the education system, one that may contradict the negative experiences among minority groups and the education system in the past.

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Keeping in Touch with Your Roots

Learning your native language also helps connect you to your ancestors and culture in a way that many other things don’t. For immigrants or children of immigrants, it’s increasingly important to keep some form of connection with one’s heritage, to serve as a continuous reminder of the hardships and challenges that had been overcome to sustain the immigrant lifestyle.

Language also helps foster a sense of belonging. Many children may be struggling to fit in to their communities or their schools. They may feel as though they need to abandon their roots and the cultural differences that set them apart from other kids, but it’s important to teach them how important it is to foster diversity, and how valuable culture is to enriching our society. For children who are growing up in a different country than they are ethnically from, it can help them feel more connected to their parents and relatives, those who speak the native language, and it can help them feel as though they have some form of ‘home’. This ‘home’ may not be a physical place, but even having the capacity to think in your native language can serve as a reminder that you’re culturally diverse and always have a ‘home’ to escape to.

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Our native language not only allows us to communicate and connect with one another, but it allows us to understand and appreciate the history of our ancestors and our upbringing. It cultivates an appreciation and understanding that is beyond beneficial for children, especially those from diverse familial backgrounds.

All in all, there are many benefits to learning to speak one’s native language. It may appear to more work than benefit at first, but the rewards of eternalizing a people’s dialect through communication are well worthwhile.

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Ialso know that this is something considered a bit of an oddity amongst us lazy, monolingual Brits. However my fluent French, rusty German and smatterings of Spanish and Dutch are nothing compared to some of my continental friends who speak five languages fluently. Indeed, amongst some of the international families I teach, children have three or four languages by the age of five or six.

Traditional Bulgarian proverb:¹

The more languages you know, the more you are a person

Foreign language learning is back on the agenda again. Since September of this year it has become a statutory requirement from the age of seven in British schools (we still have a long way to go to catch up to many of our European counterparts many of whom introduce two languages in primary school and sometimes up to another one or two at secondary school). Many people (mostly Brits) do ask me what the relevance of foreign language learning is in an age where English has become a lingua franca for business, tourism and politics. I would say that there are several responses to this question: the first being concerned with economics, the second to cognitive development and the third to developing our humanity and broad cultural knowledge.

Firstly, the economic benefits of learning a foreign language

We must recognise that English speaking nations are no longer the same powerhouses of the global economy as they once were. Emerging markets around the world are becoming increasingly dominant, and their languages then take on more importance in conducting deals the world over. Additionally, we are living in an increasingly globalised and fluid employment market where national frontiers are no longer the barriers to employment that they might once have been. Students who are currently studying at school now will not just be competing with their peers for employment from within their own country as they enter the job market, but also with their peers from around the world, many of whom will have an advantage over them of at least one foreign language.

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Secondly, the cognitive benefits of learning a foreign language

Research has shown that learning and using a foreign language has enormous benefits for the brain and that the brains of bilingual people even operate differently to single language speakers. The functionality of the brain improves as it has to recognise, negotiate meaning and communicate within different language systems and students have shown higher scores on maths, reading and vocabulary tests. Multitasking and problem solving skills become more adept as multilingual people become adept at switching between different languages. Several studies have consistently linked multilingualism to improved memory as well as delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s and dementia. Multilingual people have been shown to be better at focusing on relevant information and filtering out irrelevant information.² Additionally, learning a foreign language can make you much more aware of your own mother tongue and how to manipulate and apply grammatical and stylistic rules.

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Thirdly, developing humanity and broad cultural knowledge

I believe that one of the great responsibilities of education is to expand the world view of children in order for them to develop empathy, understanding and an appreciation of difference. There is no better way to do this than through language learning. As the tradition Chinese proverb goes: To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world.³

So now that I have established the reasons why languages are important, now to consider why is it so important to include them in the curriculum for young children? Many give objections such as ‘it’s too confusing’, ‘there isn’t enough time’  ,‘surely they should learn to read and write in their own language first’. However children are the perfect age to learn a language as their young brain is flexible and hard-wired to learning language naturally. Changes in speech muscles and the ear make this much harder from the age of about eight whereas very young children absorb sounds, structures and intonation patterns with ease⁴ and without self-consciousness. I start teaching children from two years old through stories, games and songs and am always impressed with their speed of acquisition, their ability to imitate sounds as well as their confidence at using this new language.

How important do you consider learning a foreign language? Which language would you choose for your children to learn? I would love to know your thoughts and in another blog post soon I will discuss in more detail the ways in which I get children enthused and excited as well as proficient and confident in using foreign languages.

1 http://www.omniglot.com/language/proverbs/language.htm
2 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/10126883/Why-learn-a-foreign-language-Benefits-of-bilingualism.html
3 http://www.omniglot.com/language/proverbs/language.htm
4 http://www.languagestars.com/program-overview/programs/parents-and-tots/14-programs/curriculum/66-the-benefits-of-learning-language-young.html

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The school I teach in introduces French for its very youngest nursery members at the age of 2 ½. In groups varying from 10-16 children I do two half hour sessions a week combining a mixture of songs, stories and games. It is fascinating to see how quickly the children pick up the new sounds and language and how easily they adapt and accept different ways of communicating. Language and grammatical concepts are just assimilated and their mouths are so much more malleable to the variety of sounds. At a crucial time in their speech and language development, they are the perfect recipients for new language. As proficiency develops in their mother tongue, so too it develops in whichever foreign language they are exposed to. They are learning, quite simply, how to communicate and they are so eager to understand and make themselves understood. Whenever I see the children around the school they greet me in French confidently as if it was the only way to greet me. Simply, the medium of communication with me is French and this is not confined to timetabled class hours.

Sadly, this lack of self-consciousness diminishes with age. Children become more wary of making mistakes, sounding “silly” and start overthinking the grammatical aspects of language learning. They may also feel frustrated that their level of communication is so vastly different from their ability in their native tongue. They often are desperate to communicate at a level they just do not yet have the skills for. Without a doubt, the earlier a child is exposed to a foreign language the better.

Research compared children learning a second language at birth, at age 2-3 years, at age 4-6 years or at age 7-9 years. The children in the study were tested on several aspects of language including the types of words and grammar they learned as well as the sounds they made indicating how closely they sounded like a native speaker. The results do not surprise me. Those who learned one language and then another (so learning a foreign language later); whilst they were able to become quite fluent in the second language they did not exhibit the same degree of mastery or fluency:

“We tested children on the whole landscape of human language – and the earlier they were exposed to a second language, the more masterful they were in each of these areas,” Petitto says. “So later-exposed children can say lots of words in French and Russian, but their second language had a heavy accent and they didn’t have as good grammar. They would immediately be identified as a foreign speaker.”¹

I would say that this research concurs with my own experiential evidence as well as anecdotal evidence from my years of teaching. I began French at the age of two or three and whilst this did not guarantee me fluency, with a lot of hard work and motivation to improve, I have acquired fluency (although not native level). I also took up German at the age of 11 and whilst I reached a decent level in that, I never exhibited the natural fluency that I did with French which ‘came to me’ with much greater ease. Having tried to learn both Spanish and Dutch as an adult, I am acutely aware that my approach to learning is very different from that of a young child who is able to assimilate the language. At the same time I would say that age is no barrier to learning a foreign language. It is possible but more thought has to go into it!

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However there was another interesting aspect to the study which indicated that children learnt the second language better if they picked it up in their families or communities than in a classroom setting.² I would suggest that this would be because children are using the language in a real context and not a removed academic environment. It is also more likely to be using a ‘little and often’ approach which is easier for children to absorb. However, what I would also say is that in using French with my students around the school, I am exhibiting that it can be used outside a set lesson time and used within the school community. It is one step towards breaching the barrier between classroom and community.

So how can parents introduce foreign languages to children if they do not have another language themselves?

• Duel language stories (with audio CD’s). Listen and follow the story together. Sound out the new words together. Use the pictures to help decipher meaning.
• Learn alongside your children. Some language centres offer family classes. Children love teaching their parents and seeing their parents learning too.
• Lots of libraries offer story time in other languages. Go along.
• Listen to French children’s songs together and sing them. It’s amazing how the vocabulary sticks in your mind.
• MOVE! Children learn by doing so try games such as Jacques a dit (Simon Says) to use target vocabulary. Hide pictures around the room and ask children to ‘cherchez’. Add actions to stories and songs to help them understand meaning.
• VD’s. Immerse children with cartoons in the foreign language. It normalises their experience of the language even if a lot of the language is over their heads. My students love T’choupi and Babar (all available on Youtube).
• Include intercultural information too. Children love to learn how other children live around the world, whether it is what they eat for breakfast or what their school is like.

If you want to look for language resources, there are lots out there. Amazon is a great place to start but also www.little-linguist.co.uk has lots of language resources from books and DVDs to course materials and song books. www.mamalisa.com has a great supply of songs and poems from around the globe.

How do you get your children interested in foreign languages and which approaches work for them? How young did your children start a foreign language and have they been able to sustain it? We would love to hear your thoughts.

1 http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20021104/never-too-early-to-learn-second-tongue
2 http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20021104/never-too-early-to-learn-second-tongue

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