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Keith over at muscle.vox.com found a great article about how children learn a second language. Here are the highlights:
MYTH 1:
CHILDREN LEARN SECOND LANGUAGES QUICKLY AND EASILY
The
requirements to communicate as a child are quite different from the requirements to
communicate as an adult. The child's constructions are shorter and simpler, and vocabulary
is relatively small when compared with what is necessary for adults to speak at the same
level of competence in a second language as they do in their first language. The child
does not have to learn as much as an adult to achieve competence in communicating. Hence
there is the illusion that the child learns more quickly than the adult, whereas when
controlled research is conducted, in both formal and informal learning situations, results
typically indicate that adult (and adolescent) learners perform better than young
children.
MYTH 2:
THE YOUNGER THE CHILD, THE MORE SKILLED IN ACQUIRING A SECOND LANGUAGE
The research suggests that
younger children do not necessarily have an advantage over older children and, because of
their cognitive and experiential limitations when compared to older children, are actually
at a disadvantage in how quickly they learn a second language--other things being equal.
MYTH 3:
THE MORE TIME STUDENTS SPEND IN A SECOND LANGUAGE CONTEXT, THE QUICKER THEY LEARN THE
LANGUAGE
Over the length of the
program, children in bilingual classes, where there is exposure to the home language and
to English, have been found to acquire English language skills equivalent to those
acquired by children who have been in English-only programs.
MYTH 4:
CHILDREN HAVE ACQUIRED A SECOND LANGUAGE ONCE THEY CAN SPEAK IT
The Canadian educator, Jim Cummins (1980a), cited research
evidence from a study of 1,210 immigrant children in Canada indicating that it takes these
children much longer (approximately five to seven years) to master the disembedded
cognitive language skills required for the regular English curriculum than to master oral
communicative skills. Cummins and others speak of the "linguistic
facade,"whereby children appear to be fluent in a language because of their oral
skills but have not mastered the more disembedded and decontextualized aspects of the
language.
MYTH 5:
ALL CHILDREN LEARN A SECOND LANGUAGE IN THE SAME WAY Some children are outgoing and sociable
and learn the second language quickly because they want to be like their English-speaking
peers. They do not worry about mistakes, but use limited resources to generate input from
native speakers. Other children are shy and quiet. They learn by listening and by
attending to what is happening and being said around them. They say little, for fear of
making a mistake. Nonetheless, research shows that both types of learners can be
successful second language learners. In classrooms where group work is stressed, the
socially active child is more likely to be successful; in the traditional,
teacher-oriented classroom, children who are "active listeners" have been found
to be more successful than highly sociable children.
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