Clearly, if your goal is to have your child learn a second language, it would be preferable for your child to be bilingual as opposed to fluent. Your child will have a much easier time speaking two languages if his or her brain learns both language structures at the same time. Let’s take a look at some of the developmental changes that occur in the brains of babies and children. This information can help us make informed decisions about guiding learning.

The First Month – Newborn babies develop new synaptic connections at the rate of up to three billion per second (Kotulak, 1996). Everything that a baby hears, sees, feels, tastes, and touches is absorbed by the brain and stored in its memory cells.

One to Six Months – In this time period, babies are capable of making sounds used in all the languages in the world. However, a child will learn to talk using only the sounds and words in their environment. That’s why you may never be able to properly roll your Rs or pronounce Xhosa, an African “click” language.

Six to Eight Months – The baby’s brain has about 1,000 trillion synaptic connections. After this age, the number of connections begins to diminish.

Age 10 – About half the connections have died off in the average child. The average adult has approximately five hundred trillion connections, so the number has reached a stable state.

Age 12 – Prior to about this age, the brain has been a sponge. It is during this period that the foundations for thinking, language, vision, attitudes, aptitudes, and other characteristics are laid down. After this stage of development, the windows close; the fundamental architecture of the brain is complete (Kotulak, 1996).

According to this model (Dryden & Vos, 1997), it is clear why some believed it was best to start teaching a second language at the age of 11-13. The child could more easily understand the lesson, and would likely seem to make progress more quickly than a younger child. However, a child who is first exposed to a second language at this later age will not intrinsically learn it in the same way a baby or toddler would.

Other researchers claim that the window for language learning closes even earlier, by age 6 or 7. Therefore, the best age to start learning a language is essentially from birth, or as early as possible. There isn’t a fully complete answer to this question, but most linguists now agree: the sooner you get started, the better.

 

Source :

https://www.brainscape.com/blog/2015/06/when-should-you-start-learning-second-language/

 

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