Learning English and other languages in childhood is highly beneficial because of the plasticity that the brain has during childhood and that it will never have again. This plasticity allows the brain to absorb new knowledge in a simple way. As adults we can also do it, but never with the same ease as in the first years of life.
That is why it is very important that children approach languages as early as possible, so that they can see it as something absolutely normal and it is easier for them. There are many benefits to learning English or other languages in childhood. Do you want to discover them?
Benefits of learning languages in childhood
- Greater fluency when they are under 8 years old
Children up to 8 years old have the ability to hear different sounds and reproduce them fluently. After that age the ear becomes deaf to new sounds, making native pronunciation more difficult.
- Better cognitive benefits
Learning a new language is not only a linguistic practice, but it is also learning about a new culture , as well as a different way of thinking and expressing yourself. This helps to acquire a greater development of creativity, memory capacity and mental flexibility.
- Higher performance in language skills
Learning a new language makes it essential to review linguistic knowledge in your own language. Thus, identifying the subject, the verb and the predicate, recognizing the different tenses of the verb, identifying the difference between adjectives or adverbs … are all tasks that are reviewed when learning a new language and that in the native language itself not always it is very clear.
- Culture enrichment
Learning a language is not only learning the grammar and spelling of a new language, it is also about becoming familiar with the culture of the countries of that new language. In the readings that are done you can learn things as varied as the gastronomy of a certain country, about habits, about customs, about possible sayings or set phrases that are used or about their way of thinking. All this makes the child enrich his own culture and acquire new ways of seeing and understanding the world.
- Greater opportunities in the future
For a child to learn more than one language is to open the doors of his future, since he will have the opportunity to compete with many more advantages before a job, travel without communication limitations, read the progress in a subject without limitations, study in a greater diversity of countries … In other words, languages can be a very important key to access more opportunities , both economic, social and labor.
- Enrichment of one’s life
A child who learns a new language has the opportunity to have friends all over the world. You also gain more confidence when interacting with different people. For this reason, and for all that has been seen above, it is so important to encourage children to learn new languages. It is true that in those homes in which languages have already been studied or there is a bilingual parent, there will be more opportunities, perhaps, but today there are many ways to approach languages and to get the little ones to make contact with them.
And your little ones? Have you already faced learning a language?
