Harvard Study Says Kids Learn Chinese and English the Same Way
The idea that children should learn Chinese has firmly taken hold in the United States. There are nearly 50,000 students now studying Mandarin in elementary and secondary schools in the US, according to published figures.
How hard is it, you ask, for kids to learn Chinese? Recent research has found that toddlers may learn Chinese, or any other second language, by utilizing the same building blocks—and developmental process—that babies use when first learning to speak. However, toddlers enjoy a much faster acquisition rate for new languages. They're much quicker than babies, and, in many ways, more adept than big folks, too!
Seeking to discover how children naturally acquire a second language, Harvard developmental psychologist Jesse Snedeker recently studied a group of preschool-aged children who were adopted from China.
These children, who learn Chinese in their native country, often face an abrupt transition to an all-English environment. Snedeker's findings revealed a surprising similarity between how these adopted children learned their second language and how all children learn their first language. Even more astonishing was the speed at which these little ones acquired their second language. Read more.
Sincerely,
Katie Lagana
Early Advantage |