3 Key Elements in Successful Language Learning
When learning a new language, your success depends on a number of factors and conditions, all contributing to something as complex as mastering a new tongue. To simplify things, however, we at Early Advantage have found three elements to be repeated in almost all the advice and research concerning second language learning.
The three key factors are: immersion, consistency and an early start. Making these three elements a part of your language learning strategy will ensure that your child has a strong foundation for acquiring a second language. This foundation will allow your child to grow into her new language comfortably, productively, and enjoyably.
Immersion: Providing an immersive environment is one critical part of helping your child jump into their new language with both feet. Immersion is the key to learning a language quickly but lastingly. Even if it's only for a short time each day, try exposing your child to an environment in which all, or nearly all, the verbal inputs she receives are in the desired second language. This might be in a classroom, in a conversation with a family member or friend, or with an interactive multimedia programme.
Some people see immersion as too ambitious for a child, but language immersion is important because it encourages greater recognition of all forms of communication—body language or pictorial signs—and the importance of context to language. It also encourages a child to begin thinking directly and intuitively in the new language, without the tedious process of word-by-word translation. Isn't this simpler and more natural? And if you still aren't convinced children can handle immersion, consider that they grew into their first and native language in just this fashion.
The key lesson immersion enforces is the importance of context. Our words always occur in some form of context, and learning to "read" context is as crucial as learning how to read the words themselves. This holds not just for speaking and writing, but for listening, for learning new things, for following directions, and for the wonderful, engaging process of mastering a language.
Consistency: The second key to learning a new language is consistency, by which we mean being persistent in your explorations of your new language. The process of becoming familiar with a language is a great deal like learning the streets and neighbourhoods of a city or town. In your child's case, a friendly city, with many playgrounds and parks.
Much like learning a city, exploring a language intermittently does not take you very far. Relying on a handful of important roads or streets may allow you to get to a few important places, but only by consistently travelling through a variety of neighbourhoods and along many side streets will you come to know the hidden gems and best routes of the area. If you don't explore consistently, even a small detour can make you confused. If you are consistent, however, wandering off your path merely adds to the learning and the fun of your explorations.
Consistency is crucial because learning a language depends on continuous growth; it is not something that lends itself to being cut up and memorised. Since you are growing with and into your new language, returning to previous lessons is more than repetition. It is an expansion. You can learn not just when you encounter a new word, but when you discover a new context for an old word. These new contexts are like the new neighbourhoods and side-streets you'll encounter as you continue to learn new things about the city you live in—the city of language.
Early Start: There is a wealth of scientific research studying the benefits available to children who start a second language early, but it also simply makes a great deal of sense. While you're young, you are already learning so much that the "foreignness" of a "foreign language" does not seem so strange or intimidating. In a sense, no language is "foreign" to a young child. Children constantly experiment with noises of all kinds as well, and their experimentation opens them up to the sounds of other languages.
Additionally, young children do not as readily see divisions between "learning" and "playing" and are less self-conscious about making "mistakes." They can therefore bring all the exuberance, boldness, and resilience to their new language that they would to their toy closet. Children love new words and play about with them—even in their first language. "Mistakes" are merely a natural part of that experimentation.
An early start also provides children the simple but highly valuable quantity of more time. Starting early means children have longer to see the effects of consistency and immersion bear real fruit, and to enjoy that fruit. Starting younger allows children greater room to explore more of both a first and a second language, and the ways in which these languages relate and interrelate. Seeing these relationships encourages more complex thinking and a greater ability to see nuances in both the world and in language. We are familiar already with synonyms and the vividness they can bring to language even for a monolingual speaker. As we learn the small differences in meaning words can have from one language to another, we can also discover that there are different ways of seeing and experiencing a single thing.
Immersion. Consistency. An early start. While they are not the only ingredients that can or do go into a successful language experience, they are elements that have contributed significantly for thousands of parents and their children. When exercised in combination, they form a tremendously effective trio, and they can help you and your child begin a brilliant new journey through language.
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