Benefits of Learning a Second Language in Early Childhood Peer Review
July 17, 2017
Bilingual babies: Study shows how exposure to a foreign language ignites infants' learning
UW educatee Jinnie Yi works with a toddler at one of the participating infant education centers in Madrid.I-LABS
For years, scientists and parents alike have touted the benefits of introducing babies to two languages: Bilingual experience has been shown to improve cerebral abilities, peculiarly problem-solving.
And for infants raised in households where two languages are spoken, that bilingual learning happens nigh effortlessly. Merely how can babies in monolingual households develop such skills?
"As researchers studying early language development, we often hear from parents who are eager to provide their child with an opportunity to learn another language, but tin't afford a nanny from a strange country and don't speak a foreign language themselves," said Naja Ferjan Ramirez, a research scientist at the University of Washington Institute of Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS).
A new study past I-LABS researchers, published July 17 in Mind, Brain, and Education, is amid the first to investigate how babies can learn a 2d language outside of the home. The researchers sought to reply a fundamental question: Can babies exist taught a second language if they don't become foreign language exposure at dwelling, and if so, what kind of foreign language exposure, and how much, is needed to spark that learning?
The researchers took their query all the manner to Europe, developing a play-based, intensive, English-language method and curriculum and implementing it in four public infant-teaching centers in Madrid, Spain. Sixteen UW undergraduates and recent graduates served equally tutors for the study, undergoing 2 weeks of training at I-LABS to learn the didactics method and curriculum earlier traveling to Kingdom of spain. The country's extensive public teaching system enabled the researchers to enroll 280 infants and children from families of varying income levels.
Based on years of I-LABS inquiry on infant brain and language evolution, the method emphasizes social interaction, play, and loftier quality and quantity of language from the teachers. The approach uses "infant-directed speech" — often chosen "parentese" — the speech style parents apply to talk to their babies, which has simpler grammar, higher and exaggerated pitch, and drawn-out vowels.
"Our enquiry shows that parentese helps babies learn language," Ferjan Ramirez said.
Babies aged seven to 33.v months were given one hour of English sessions a mean solar day for 18 weeks, while a control group received the Madrid schools' standard bilingual programme. Both groups of children were tested in Spanish and English language at the start and end of the xviii weeks. The children besides wore special vests outfitted with lightweight recorders that recorded their English language learning. The recordings were analyzed to determine how many English words and phrases each kid spoke.
An infant takes a await at a picture during a session with UW student Anna Kunz.I-LABS
The children who received the UW method showed rapid increases in English comprehension and production, and significantly outperformed the command grouping peers at all ages on all tests of English. Past the end of the eighteen-week programme, the children in the UW program produced an average of 74 English words or phrases per child, per hr; children in the control group produced 13 English words or phrases per kid, per hour.
Ferjan Ramirez said the findings show that even babies from monolingual homes can develop bilingual abilities at this early historic period.
"With the right scientific discipline-based approach that combines the features known to grow children's language, it is possible to give very young children the opportunity to starting time learning a second language, with just one hour of play per twenty-four hours in an early teaching setting," she said. "This has large implications for how we think about strange-language learning."
Follow-upwardly testing 18 weeks later showed the children had retained what they learned. The English language gains were similar betwixt children attention the two schools serving predominantly low-income neighborhoods and the two serving mid-income areas, suggesting that wealth was not a significant cistron in the infants' ability to acquire a foreign language. Children's native language (Spanish) continued to abound as they were learning English, and was not negatively affected by introducing a second language.
"Science indicates that babies' brains are the best learning machines ever created, and that infants' learning is time-sensitive. Their brains will never exist better at learning a 2nd language than they are between 0 and 3 years of age," said co-author Patricia Kuhl, co-director of I-LABS and a UW professor of speech and hearing sciences.
The results, Kuhl said, accept the potential to transform how early on language instruction is approached in the United States and worldwide:
"Parents in Madrid, in the Usa and effectually the globe are eager to provide their children with an opportunity to learn a foreign language early on. The U.S. census shows that 27 percent of America's children under the age of half-dozen are at present learning a language other than English language at home. While these children are fully capable of learning both their parents' language and English, they oftentimes do not have acceptable exposure to English language prior to kindergarten entry and every bit a result, often lag behind their peers once they enter school," she said.
"I-LABS' new work shows we tin create an early bilingual learning environment for dual-language learners in an educational setting, and in ane hour per 24-hour interval, infants can ignite the learning of a 2d language earlier and much easier than we previously idea. This is doable for everybody," Kuhl said.
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For more information, contact Ferjan Ramirez at naja@uw.edu or 206-747-7850 and Kuhl at pkkuhl@uw.edu or 206-685-1921.
The study was supported by the Madrid Regional Ministry of Teaching, Youth and Sport, and the UW I-LABS Ready Mind Project.
The UW method emphasized playful social interaction and agile kid participation. Hither, UW student Martin Horst plays with the children.I-LABS
Tag(south): Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences • I-LABS • Naja Ferjan Ramirez • Patricia Kuhl
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Source: https://www.washington.edu/news/2017/07/17/bilingual-babies-study-shows-how-exposure-to-a-foreign-language-ignites-infants-learning/
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