More and more parents are enrolling their children, their very young children, into language classes. Parents are starting their children off from the age of 1 in some cases and sometimes with multiple foreign languages as well. In Chicago, there is a school called Language Stars that believes this is the best time for anyone to learn a language. Children’s brains are hardwired for this function and can mimic, distinguish between languages, and speak spontaneously. Also, they don’t get confused between translating because they’re building each language separately in their heads.
One of the reasons I want to be bilingual is for my children and I think schools like this are a great idea.
Wow! That’s cool and encouraging!
I’m jealous!
By the way Suzette Haden Elgin a prof. of linguistics and science fiction wrote about language acquisition in her series Native Tongue. Though about lots of issue including feminism and a separate language for women the books deals with teaching languages to babies which she calls “interfacing”. It’s an interesting book for both science-fiction lovers and language lovers.
I would like my kid speak Turkish, Spanish and English when s/he is growing up
it would be cool!
Yes, lucky children avoiding the ‘fun’ we have with language learning. I want mine to speak English, Spanish and Portuguese…to start with. There are other things I think about teaching my children from a young age, like values and ideas I took rather a long time to figure out. Having children is set to be an exciting and scary time!