Infant Industry: Mandarin for Babies?
How to make your child multi-lingual (ixnay ora-Day).
by Kristin Gangwer
April 3, 2007
Can you describe a typical class?
Children learn if they are emotionally engaged. In my experience, the little details are going to make the difference between the child who learns something and retains it for life, and the child who forgets everything in just a few weeks. The teacher is going to play for a few minutes with some puppets, and then they are up and they are moving, and your conclusion would be that the teacher is just playing with the kids and improvising. Except that if you open the door of another classroom, another language, you would see that it's nearly identical.
Why do you think parents decide to enroll their children in language classes?
I think that more and more parents realize that today we are living in a global world. It is extremely important to be able to speak at least two languages, preferably three or more. And neurolinguists have shown that the brain of the child is extremely malleable within the first few years, like warm wax that can be imprinted with the sounds of any language. But that wax, little by little, How does a three-year-old say strawberries en français? Strawberries — with a very French accent.becomes colder and harder, and what you can imprint in the brain within the first few years is more difficult to do later in life. Young children are like computers without printers. They may not be able to speak yet, but it doesn't mean that they don't understand. It does not mean that they don't absorb. They just aren't verbal yet. That's the same way as in your own language. When you were three months, you were not speaking. Were you?
I don't think so.
Let's say that you started to speak at thirteen or eighteen months. That doesn't mean that you really learned the words that you were producing exactly at that time. You learned the words long, long before. But you were able to produce them when you became verbal.
A lot of funny things must happen in your work with children.
Years ago, we had somebody who had just started to learn French. He was about three-and-a-half or four years old. He took classes for only three or four weeks, once a week — not a lot — so his French was extremely limited. He went to Paris, and he was in a restaurant with his parents, and the parents said, "I would like to order strawberries. Do you know how to say that?" Of course, he didn't know, but his answer was strawberries — with a very French accent. So at least, in three or four classes, he got the accent!
©2007 Kristin Gangwer and Nerve Media
About the Author |
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Kristin Gangwer was raised in Oklahoma, where she developed a fondness for open spaces and all things western. She now lives in Washington D.C., works for National Geographic, and enjoys swimming in rivers, hiking the AT, writing about outdoor adventures and booty dancing to dancehall. |
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