Harvard University Study: Kids Learn Chinese and English the Same Way
The idea that children should learn Chinese has grown by leaps and bounds in British schools over the past few years. Available instruction has swelled from 70 schools in 2003 to over 400 in May 2007. Yet there remains a common perception that Chinese is too difficult for children—especially young children—to learn. How hard is it, you may well ask, for kids to learn Chinese? Recent research suggests that toddlers may learn Chinese, or any other second language, by employing the same methods—and the same cognitive or linguistic tools—that babies use when they first learn to speak. However, toddlers speed up the process considerably; they're much faster than babies at picking up a language, and more natural in their efforts than adults.
Children learn Chinese by following the same developmental path used to learn English
Harvard developmental psychologist Jesse Snedeker recently completed a study of a group of nursery-aged children who had been adopted from China. The study's purpose was to discover the means by which children naturally acquire a second language in a foreign environment. These children, who had learnt Chinese in their native country, faced an abrupt transition to an all-English environment. However, Snedeker learnt that, in the 3 to 18 months after their arrival in the US, the Chinese children had followed the same language-learning patterns we associate with infants.
Around their first birthday, most children start using their primary language by speaking in single-word utterances. This timeline holds true for children regardless of language or locale: it doesn't matter if they first learn Chinese or English or Urdu. After several more months, they start combining more than one word and using phrases, gradually expressing more complex ideas, and speaking with greater consistency. For instance, an 18-month-old child raised to learn English might ask, "Cookie eat?," while a 2-year-old raised in a Chinese-language household would offer her parent with the cookie jar a grateful "Xie xie!" (Thank you!) Basic vocabularies are mostly nouns, and initially children keep their utterances short and direct.
Toddlers quickly adapt to a second language
Snedeker found that infants and preschoolers follow very similar steps as they acquire language, but at very different rates. On average, the adopted preschoolers in the study learnt as many words in the first three months they spent in the US as an infant might learn between its 12th and 24th month. In other words, the preschoolers were acquiring language four times faster overall! Such an accelerated rate would put the adopted children on pace to catch up to their native English-speaking peers and achieve fluency in their new language.
Though Snedeker's project studied children who learn English as a second language, rather than children who spoke English first and later learnt Chinese, the implications are not confined to any one language. "Are the early stages reflections of cognitive immaturity, or do they represent necessary steps in decoding the target language?" Snedeker asks in a recent number of Psychological Science. "Our results strongly suggest that these features of early language production are due to the nature of the learning problem rather than the limitations of infant learners." The study also affirms the increasingly accepted fact that young children are incredibly flexible and resilient in terms of their linguistic abilities.
Programmes for kids to learn Chinese
The adopted children featured in Snedeker's study were exposed to their new language primarily through direct contact with peers, in a full-immersion environment. Most children learning a second language—including the thousands of British children who learn Chinese—also have access to bilingual teachers and language programmes.
Some students attend Mandarin-mandatory schools, like Kingsford Community School, a secondary school, or Brighton College, which has started teaching Mandarin in nursery to three-year-olds. "Mandarin is a tonal language and children find that much easier when they are younger," says Richard Cairns, the headmaster. "The Mandarin teachers have said that if they had them when they were three, four, five, they could get them speaking fluently."
And contrary to its reputation for being difficult, Chinese seems to be more popular among young children—especially among boys, according to Joan Deslandes, the head teacher at Kingsford. Cairns says that kids learn Chinese enthusiastically: "What the pupils like is that it's so different. When you are younger it is quite exciting. Some of the kids who don't like French and German love Chinese. They like the pictorial element [of Chinese characters]."
Many advantages for kids who learn Chinese
Indeed, the desire to learn Chinese has grown in many parts of the English-speaking world, moving beyond cultural boundaries, especially in America. "It really is almost unprecedented," agrees Marty Abbott, director of education at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. "I think we would have to characterise what's happening with the expansion of Chinese programs right now as an explosion," he added, in a conversation with The Los Angeles Times.
China's role in our interconnected world has grown in importance and influence, and its effects can be seen across the political, cultural and economic spectra. Clever parents recognise that pupils who learn Chinese today may find new and exciting ways to succeed are open to them tomorrow. Beyond the possibility of someday doing business in China's burgeoning markets, tremendous opportunities await future global citizens in world travel, international friendships, and a chance for young pupils to broaden their horizons.
And the good news is that, even if your children do not have the opportunity to go to a Chinese-intensive program like Kingsford or Brighton, even a well-grounded familiarity with the language and the script can and will make a great deal of difference. In an article in The Times, Cairns remarked that even knowledge of 1,000 words in Chinese "will open doors." He goes on to say, "I want everyone to have that benefit. The world doesn't come to us any more; we have to go to the world."
Programmes and parents alike are quickly catching on to the opportunities and benefits available to kids who learn Chinese—almost as quickly, that is, as a toddler learning the language itself!
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