Hablo Espanol? Gracias.

On a trip to Florida earlier this year, I learned that in Spanish huevos means 'eggs' and leche means 'milk.' The lessons came courtesy of my friend's 15-month-old daughter who is being raised in a bilingual household (she loves huevos). Meanwhile, two of my colleagues -- mid-career adults -- also are learning Espanol. The ability to communicate in more than one language is an increasingly valuable asset as our communities become more diverse and our business interactions become global. Associate University Editor Anne Glenzer recently spoke (in English) with Kendall King, an assistant professor of linguistics, about the way people of all ages learn second languages.

Q: We often hear that children are better than adults at learning new languages. Is that true?

A: I think it's accurate that this is a pretty widespread myth, or belief. … First of all, when you say children are better language learners, what do you mean by better? "Better" can mean faster, so if you have a child and an adult, they both move to Russia, after a year or after 6 months, who's going to speak better Russian? It could also mean who's going to reach a higher level of ultimate attainment. Who, after 20 years, is going to sound more native-like? So whenever we think of "better," we have to think what exactly that means. Does that mean better after 2 weeks, or after 20 years? … You hear people say that all the time -- "children pick it up like sponges," "with children it's like osmosis," and so forth. Certainly it's a widespread popular belief, but it's also a big question for researchers.

The way this has been framed in the research has been, "is there a critical period?" And what they mean by critical period is, is there a period after which it becomes much more difficult to attain native-like competence? That sounds like a pretty simple question, and a pretty straightforward formulation, but it's actually really complicated.

Q: In what ways is it complicated?

A: The critical period seems to be earlier for some aspects of language, like pronunciation or accent. So that if the child is not exposed before, say, 6 or 7, he or she will have a difficult time achieving native-like pronunciation in Russian or whatever the second language is. The age tends to be closer to 12, roughly, for things like grammar, and might be even later, like 14 or 15, for things like social-cultural competence involved in knowing the interactional rules for conversation, that sort of thing.

Q: How would you summarize the research?

A: I should say that there's a lot of conflicting research in this area, and a huge amount of debate. But there's a fair amount of evidence that the earlier language learning starts the better. In other words, children who are exposed to their second language before the critical period, say before adolescence, will reach higher levels of attainment than will those who have no exposure to the language until they are adults. However, there's also evidence that adolescents and adults are faster in the initial period. A quick-and-dirty summary is that, if we think of who's "better," adolescents and adults are faster, but children reach a more native-like end state.

Q: How does the environment in which the person is learning play a role? An immigrant learning the language of his new country versus an English-speaking middle school student learning French in an American classroom…

A: I think part of the reason this field is so controversial, and why there's a lot of variation in the research findings, is because there's very different experiences by different learners. For instance, if you take the case of a family that moves abroad, the scenario is a mother and child, who's 7, move to Moscow. Let's say it's a visiting professor and they're there for a year, the mother and the daughter are going to have very different experiences typically. The child will more often than not be in a Russian environment, exposed to Russian peers, where the mother most times will be at home or maybe be in a work environment that is accommodating to her. … There are also different psychological approaches, so the child might not feel anxious that she doesn't know how to speak. If she's a young child, she may not [feel socially awkward], whereas adults have all sorts of anxieties about using a second language. So the experiences tend to be very different.

Q: What about classroom learning when you are not immersed in a foreign language situation?

A: Environment is a huge factor, for one, because it relates to total amount of exposure. If you're taking a foreign language course, you're limited to a few hours a day at most and typically a few hours a week. Obviously, there are advantages to going abroad. However, it's also important to point out that you can go abroad and still not be in an environment that is interactionally rich, which is giving you the opportunity and/or requiring you to engage in the linguistic interactions that are going to be important for improving your second-language proficiency.

Q: Would growing up in a bilingual household be considered an interactionally rich environment for children?

A: Some people have suggested that young children have an advantage because they then learn their second language in the same way they learned their first. It tends to be informal. There's usually no explicit teaching for first-language acquisition. … I’m trying to raise my child bilingually, for instance, and I know lots of faculty parents are as well. One of the tricky things, though, is thinking about the amount of exposure the child receives. This is true for language-majority parents like us, who speak English at home, and also for language-minority parents. To have some hope of being equally proficient in both languages, the [children] need to have roughly equal amounts of exposure to each language. Children are very, very sensitive to the high-status language in the society. Even at age 2, 3, 4, kids get that English is the language here. It's very common for children to end up understanding both languages, but only speaking English.

Q: So, it sounds like those of us who speak only one language are not doomed to be monolingual forever…

A: Almost everybody can think of somebody who did not start learning a foreign language until they were 20, and sounds like a native speaker. And you also think of people who started learning when they were 5 or 6 and still have their original accent. It could be something to do with their cognitive or maturational constraints. It could be something to do with the type of environment that they were in. It could also be related to issues of identity. For instance, maybe the adult still wants to signal her affiliation with France and doesn't want to sound like a native speaker of English. It's sort of a cliché to say, but the issue is complex.

Source: University News

April 24, 2008