How much time does a toddler need to learn a second language?

With daily one-hour training for four months, a toddler may be able to learn a second language.

Knowing two languages ​​is proven to be responsible for improving cognitive abilities in infants and children, especially skills related to problem solving. For bilingual babies, learning takes place effortlessly, but a recent study notes that babies from monolingual places can also acquire a language in a short time.

According to a study by researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute of Learning & Brain Sciencesinfants between the ages of 7 and 33 months can learn a second language, such as English, with only one session a day for 18 weeks. To prove this research, a method was applied that emphasizes the social interaction, games, and the language form of the teachers, who spoke with the children in the same way that the parents speak with the babies, that is, with a simple grammar, and a loud and exaggerated tone of voice.

The experiment compared these sessions with those for children of the same age in schools in Madrid, Spain, in conventional bilingual programs. A recording device was attached to each baby to record how many words and phrases each child spoke per day.

Children who received the new learning method showed a rapid increase in understanding and production of the new language, improving significantly in comparison to the others. At the end of the 18 weeks the children who were part of the research produced an average of 74 words or phrases in English per hour, while the rest were only 13. This shows to the researchers that, despite equivalent ages, children from monolingual environments were also able to develop bilingual skills in a short time, which made the researchers recommend that we revise the way we focus on learning foreign languages ​​in schools and language centers around the world.

In that sense, surveys conducted 18 weeks later showed that children who used the new method had better absorbed what they had learned. Parallel to this, the level of the native language of the children grew at their own pace, without being influenced negatively by the introduction of another language.

Patricia Kuhl, one of the authors of the study, believes that “babies’ brains are the best learning machines out there. Your brain will never be as good at learning a second language as it is between 0 and 3 years old.  Therefore, creating a bilingual learning environment early in a particular educational setting can make the child learn a second language in an easier way than we thought, and this is possible for everyone. “

(Visited 91 times, 1 visits today)

Did you like this content? Follow Trnslate on Facebook for daily articles and funny lingo-pictures.