Guest Post: Early Childhood Education – The Best Time For Bilingual Learning

It goes without saying that in an economic time like the one we're currently in, a good education is one of the best ways to prepare children for survival in the economic jungle of the future. If this current trend continues, your child will grow up to enter a workforce in which the competition is nothing short of cut-throat. As sad as it is, our children need to develop skills now that can help them in the future.

The Bilingual Future

A major trend that has become huge is the existence of a diverse, global society. Nowhere is this more true than in the United States. Almost from the beginning, the U.S. has been a land of immigrants, and while the "melting pot" has been an interesting theory, it has not happened in practice. On the contrary, most major U.S. population centers have become more of an ethnic and linguistic checkerboard; Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese and Chinese speakers represent some of the fastest-growing segments of the immigrant U.S. population.

Getting Ready

While traditionally, children learn a second language in middle school, or even high school, research has shown that this teaching can begin at a very early age, even at their child care facilities. Studies clearly demonstrate that the optimal period in a child's life for multilingual education is during the preschool years – at exactly the same time they are learning their first language. Yes, it is possible to learn a second and third language later in life, but it is more difficult, because that neurological "window of opportunity" – when the brain is most malleable – has passed.

Dr. Fred Genessee, Professor of Psychology at McGill University in Montreal, believes that it's as easy for young children to learn two or three languages as it is for them to learn one. He's not alone; educators throughout the world (in countries that often have two or even three official languages) have understood this for decades.

The best way for a child to learn a second language is by actually speaking it in a total immersion environment. You may recall an episode of the animated series The Simpsons in which young Bart gets trapped on a farm in France – and by the end of the episode, finds he's actually speaking the language. While this was a fictional scenario, the phenomenon is real; anyone who has taken young children abroad to stay with relatives in a foreign country for any length of time has observed this happening.

Co-written by Emily Patterson and Kathleen Thomas

Emily and Kathleen are Communications Coordinators for the network of Atlanta child care facilities belonging to the AdvancED® accredited family of Primrose child care schools.  Primrose Schools are located in 16 states throughout the U.S. and are dedicated to delivering progressive, early childhood, Balanced Learning® curriculum throughout their preschools.

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Thank you so much to Emily and Kathleen for providing this article.  Stonewall and I have frequently discussed teaching Lil Mootz another language.  Unfortunately, while Stonewall is moderately fluent in Spanish, I am not.  That would make our conversations around here pretty one-sided.  That being said, we are trying to teach Lil Mootz some words in Spanish.  Granted, he won't be conjugating verbs anytime soon, but he knows his zapatos go on his feet, he likes to pet his perros and we're working on reading his libros.  Zapatos are more like papoos and perros are roos, but he also thinks oatmeal in English is coco and pickles are pickeys, so it's a good start.

Do you teach your child a second language?