A che età bisogna cominciare ad imparare una lingua?

Most parents ask us when is the right time to start learning a language. Of course the answer would be: right from the first day your baby is born. Researchers have shown that children do listen and react to voices around them. So, they are able to percept the tone and timber of voices which they will eventually associate with sweet or harsh condition. The pitches of the voice have to do with perception of calm or nervousness of children who listen to them. Children who are born into families whereby parents have less dispute during the period of childhood and thus less shouting in the family would lead to a smooth upbringing of the baby and would indirectly affect the psyche of the child. The child brought up in an family atmosphere, whereby the parents do shout and fight too often, would instead impact the child in terms of nervousness and aggressively.

Children are able to recognize and associate voices to each of the parent or siblings. This also helps the children to be able to learn a language so smoothly right from their first day of life. Researchers have proved that if a parent speaks a language and the other parent speaks another language to the baby, he or she is able to understand what both parents are saying. And the baby is also able to distinguish a language from the other. Thus the baby would grow up bilingual.

In this way, to answer the question of the parents, the time to start learning a language is right immediately after the birth. Many people think that speaking two different languages to the children from birth would confuse the children linguistic, communicative and comprehension ability . But this is not true. Children are able to absorb and learn languages simultaneously. This is also because, unlike the adults, they do not feel the need to analyze the grammar or structure of the phrase and look for the logic in the phraseological order of composition of phrases. Instead this is the contrary with adults trying to learn a new language. They always tend to want to compare and allocate the new language in the context of the one they already know well. It’s like they need a point of reference to lean on to be able to move. They need to place a logic on the phrases they are learning, and at the same time they need to be able to decipher what they have just heard by placing it parallel to what they already know. This mechanism slows down the perception of the concept in the message in the phrase. Not only does the mechanism reduces and mental elaboration timing, but it does not always find a juxtapositon to collocate the new language with respect to the ‘’old’’ one. Especially if the two languages are of different origins: neo- Latin and Germanic for instance.

This brings about a total disconnection between hearing and interpretation of the contents for adults while children react to the hearing with immediate action. In other words, the more we become adult, the more relatively difficult it becomes to learn a second language.

So, parents, get your children to start learning languages right away.

The new law promoted by the government on introducing the teaching of foreign languages in the primary school is a confirmation of the idea that languages are supposed to be taught as early as possibly in children’s life.

Anyway, age does not necessarily compromise the possibility of learning language for adults. The methodology compensates for the ability to learn. It is the duty of the teacher to be able to adapt a special method of teaching adults, taking into consideration that their learning capacity is not as sharp as that of children. In other words, it may be more difficult and there could be less fun in teaching adults compared to teaching children. The other side of the coin is that you may be able to correct mistakes on adults learning while children absorb whatever you teach them relatively easily, that it may be very difficult to erase any mistake taught to them.

So parents, be careful who you entrust your child to in learning any skill including language because it is going to be a real imprinting for the child. You can’t afford any mistake in teaching children, you may never be able to erase mistakes in teaching thus causing permanent damage to the children.

Enjoy!