Children and Second Language Learning

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Children and Second Language Learning
Growing up while learning more than one language is a norm for many children in the contemporary globalized world. According to some researchers a majority of the people around the world use more than one language regularly. Consequently, parents try to ensure that their children can communicate in more than one language to avoid disadvantaging them in cases where they have to interact with people from different cultures. While such efforts can help the child, it is also important to ensure that bilingualism does not risk the child’s intellectual or emotional development (Nicoladis et al., 2016). Therefore, a study on children and how growing up speaking two languages affects them provides useful information to parents, educators and legislators concerning child development.
Bilingualism is important in the development of the children as it helps them sharpen and broaden their minds. Ages between 0 and 3 are the most suitable for a child to learn a second language since this state is the most flexible in the growth and development phase (Trautner). Researchers have established that bilingually exposed infants were adept at switching languages as early as 6 months. These children could learn a second language more easily in addition to their native language. In addition, they developed other cognitive skills quite fast as evident in their ability to walk early. The University of Washington News report on the U.S. census indicates that 27 percent of children under six years were learning a language other than English. These statistics show that second language learning has no impact on the child’s second language learning.
Many other researchers confirm that exposing a children to two languages, whether the child has a condition such as the Down Syndrome, Autism Spectrum Disorder, or any other illness that can impair speech development, does not lead to any impacts on the child. Accord...