Start early to help your child become bilingual

Pediatrics for Parents, Oct, 2003 by Emily Brandon

One in five parents attempt to teach their children a foreign language, said an AOL Time Warner poll of parents. How can you boost your child's linguistic prowess? According to Dr. Laura-Ann Petitto, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth University, there is a formula for helping a young monolingual child to develop into a fully bilingual adult.

Step One: Early Exposure

The very best dual language outcomes arise when a child is exposed to both languages from birth. "Early exposure is the best way for a human child to achieve full and equal native fluency in two languages with no accent or grammatical errors," said Petitto.

It is possible to learn the basics of any language throughout one's entire lifetime. However, the ability to speak a given language in complete grammatical correctness declines with age.

A study conducted by J. S. Johnson and E.L. Newport of the Psychology Department at the University of Virginia tested the ability of Chinese and Korean immigrants to the United States to determine grammatical correctness. No immigrant in the study was able to determine grammatical correctness as well as native speakers. They also found that the earlier the immigrants were exposed to English, the more answers they got correct as a continuous function.

When immersion in the English language did not occur until adulthood, performance levels decreased to slightly above chance. Petitto recommends that one learn a given language before age five for maximum fluency.

Step Two: Consistent Exposure

Learning a language requires a serious amount of exposure to it. Sitting a child in front of a television program in Spanish or having them listen to a tape of Japanese may help them to pick up a few foreign words, but it will not help them to become fluent in a second language.

"It's extremely useful if the parents speak the non-English language and use the language as much as they can," said Dr. Fred Genesee, Professor of Psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Marisabel Novillo, a mother of four in Utica, New York, raised all of her children bilingually in Spanish and English and feels that they are all completely fluent in both languages. She spoke only Spanish in the home and her children learned English at school. "The best thing is when the mother speaks to them in Spanish," Novillo advises.

Novillo said that her nephew and nieces are not fluent in Spanish because their mother speaks only English and therefore the children had trouble learning both languages.

However, even if the parent does not speak a second language, it is still possible for the child to become bilingual. Genesee suggests a daycare, preschool, or nanny who will interact with the child in a foreign language. The child must consistently hear the language and feel a need to be able to speak it. One or two times per week won't be enough. To become fluent the child must come into contact with the language on a daily basis.

Step Three: Exposure Across Rich and Varied Contexts

Children must be exposed to each language that they learn in a variety of different settings. An hour or two a day in a classroom will not be enough to have your child speaking the language.

Speaking a target language with peers seems to have the most influential role in learning it, said Genesee. Interacting with other children on the playground, in the classroom, and at the bus stop is what allows children to grasp the subtle structure that makes up the language and learn how to use it in a social setting.

Novillo said that her children learned English very easily by interacting with their teachers at school and with their friends in a play setting. Using a language with peers as well as adults in a variety of contexts makes children want to learn the language and makes learning its nuances challenging and fun.

A desire to communicate is what drives people to learn languages and makes them useful. Exposing a child to a foreign language early, consistently, and across rich and varied contexts will, according to current research, help them develop into a fully bilingual adult with unlimited capabilities.

Emily Brandon is a contributor to AOL Time Warner's Parenting Magazine. She also works for the Center for Visual Science at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY, where she is studying the mechanisms of visual recovery after a stroke, as well as vision corrective eye surgery.