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How Do Kids Become Bilingual So Easily?

By LAURAN NEERGAARD
,
AP
posted: 6 HOURS 39 MINUTES AGO
comments: 32
filed under: Science News
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WASHINGTON (July 21) – The best time to learn a foreign language: Between birth and age 7. Missed that window?
New research is showing just how children's brains can become bilingual so easily, findings that scientists hope eventually could help the rest of us learn a new language a bit easier.
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"We think the magic that kids apply to this learning situation, some of the principles, can be imported into learning programs for adults," says Dr. Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington, who is part of an international team now trying to turn those lessons into more teachable technology.
Each language uses a unique set of sounds. Scientists now know babies are born with the ability to distinguish all of them, but that ability starts weakening even before they start talking, by the first birthday.
Kuhl offers an example: Japanese doesn't distinguish between the "L" and "R" sounds of English — "rake" and "lake" would sound the same. Her team proved that a 7-month-old in Tokyo and a 7-month-old in Seattle respond equally well to those different sounds. But by 11 months, the Japanese infant had lost a lot of that ability.
Time out — how do you test a baby? By tracking eye gaze. Make a fun toy appear on one side or the other whenever there's a particular sound. The baby quickly learns to look on that side whenever he or she hears a brand-new but similar sound. Noninvasive brain scans document how the brain is processing and imprinting language.
Mastering your dominant language gets in the way of learning a second, less familiar one, Kuhl's research suggests. The brain tunes out sounds that don't fit.
"You're building a brain architecture that's a perfect fit for Japanese or English or French," whatever is native, Kuhl explains — or, if you're a lucky baby, a brain with two sets of neural circuits dedicated to two languages.
It's remarkable that babies being raised bilingual — by simply speaking to them in two languages — can learn both in the time it takes most babies to learn one. On average, monolingual and bilingual babies start talking around age 1 and can say about 50 words by 18 months.
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Italian researchers wondered why there wasn't a delay, and reported this month in the journal Science that being bilingual seems to make the brain more flexible.
The researchers tested 44 12-month-olds to see how they recognized three-syllable patterns — nonsense words, just to test sound learning. Sure enough, gaze-tracking showed the bilingual babies learned two kinds of patterns at the same time — like lo-ba-lo or lo-lo-ba — while the one-language babies learned only one, concluded Agnes Melinda Kovacs of Italy's International School for Advanced Studies.
While new language learning is easiest by age 7, the ability markedly declines after puberty.
"We're seeing the brain as more plastic and ready to create new circuits before than after puberty," Kuhl says. As an adult, "it's a totally different process. You won't learn it in the same way. You won't become (as good as) a native speaker."
Yet a soon-to-be-released survey from the Center for Applied Linguistics, a nonprofit organization that researches language issues, shows U.S. elementary schools cut back on foreign language instruction over the last decade. About a quarter of public elementary schools were teaching foreign languages in 1997, but just 15 percent last year, say preliminary results posted on the center's Web site.
What might help people who missed their childhood window? Baby brains need personal interaction to soak in a new language — TV or CDs alone don't work. So researchers are improving the technology that adults tend to use for language learning, to make it more social and possibly tap brain circuitry that tots would use.
Recall that Japanese "L" and "R" difficulty? Kuhl and scientists at Tokyo Denki University and the University of Minnesota helped develop a computer language program that pictures people speaking in "motherese," the slow exaggeration of sounds that parents use with babies.
Japanese college students who'd had little exposure to spoken English underwent 12 sessions listening to exaggerated "Ls" and "Rs" while watching the computerized instructor's face pronounce English words. Brain scans — a hair dryer-looking device called MEG, for magnetoencephalography — that measure millisecond-by-millisecond activity showed the students could better distinguish between those alien English sounds. And they pronounced them better, too, the team reported in the journal NeuroImage.
"It's our very first, preliminary crude attempt but the gains were phenomenal," says Kuhl.
But she'd rather see parents follow biology and expose youngsters early. If you speak a second language, speak it at home. Or find a play group or caregiver where your child can hear another language regularly.
"You'll be surprised," Kuhl says. "They do seem to pick it up like sponges."
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2009-07-21 17:22:49
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DrWDS

11:45 PMJul 22 2009

Private school in my city teaches Mandarin, starting in kindergarten.

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feelwrong721

11:39 PMJul 22 2009

Is it wrong for a man l to have sugar baby?? you know it is an absolutely extramarital relationship, but more and more services c ome out on Internet focusing on this kind of relationship..like !!!.----SugarsCupid. C O M----what will the world be??

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PRAYMONDC

11:38 PMJul 22 2009

We seem to live in a country that resents any language other than English. Our children should be taught either German, Spanish or French at a minimum. Is there any wonder we are so far behind the world in languages and learning. Our soldiers end up over seas unable to communicate with the locals... and we wonder why we are viewed as strange unwelcome.

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JDW Yacht

11:21 PMJul 22 2009

It is obvious that adults can learn NOTHING,,, SO, it must be in the kids days that everything is lernt ! RIGHT ! ! ! PURE LOGIC GUYS ! ! !

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DBatt911

11:16 PMJul 22 2009

It's easier to learn anything when youy are young because everything is new. Learning to swim at a young age is easier because a child is more relaxed and its fun. An adult would be more concerned about making a mistake while speaking another language plus people have more patience with a child trying to speak. Also after you learn doing anything one way it is hard to go against the way you are used to doing it. Coaches will tell you about that when they try to retain athletes and employers will tell you about that when they hire a person that learned how to do something in a different way at a previous job.

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RANN948

11:09 PMJul 22 2009

Another ridiculous study, paid for no doubt by taxpayers. Any educator with half a brain could have come up with this finding. Of course children learn language easier than adults. They are wired for it, it's self-preservation. Once you learn the language or languages you need to communicate with your care-givers, the circuits become less malleable - otherwise you'd "forget" too easily.

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Tedsaralee

10:44 PMJul 22 2009

I grew up in Brazil and speak Portuguese fluently, but when I was five and returned to the US for two years, I completely forgot the language. I remembered my old friends, and their names, so I was bewildered when I returned and could not speak with them. I re-learned Portuguese in about a year, and since we stayed there for the next 7 years, I never lost it again.

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janesmith900

10:29 PMJul 22 2009

Is it wrong for a man to have a sugar baby or a woman to have sugar daddy?? It is an absolutely extramarital relationship, but more and more services came out on Internet focusing on this kind of relationship. such as ^-^ http:// Su gar Da ddy Ch at.c om/ ^-^ it's the biggest sugar dating for beutiful women and rich men.

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SJ MIR

10:28 PMJul 22 2009

I spoke two languages as a child. Was fluent in Hebrew but as I got older there was no one to talk Hebrew to (great grandparent died) and I left Yeshiva to go to public school. I am now 50 and cannot speak a word of Hebrew anymore..My brain just lost it all. Tried to go to a local Temple for lessons but it didn't work..So I do believe if you want your child to speak another language you have to do it when they are young..They just pick it up so much easier than adults...

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EvelynRanma52

10:07 PMJul 22 2009

This is a real good argument against the continuing waste of money on bi-lingual education. It doesn't work anyway, and only keeps children from learning the new language they are supposed to learn.

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The best time to learn a foreign language: Between birth and age 7. Missed that window?