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Bilingual Babies!
Teaching Your Child a Foreign Language
By Katherine Bontrager
"By 6 months, children in English-speaking households already have developed different auditory maps, shown by electrical measurements, that identify which neurons respond to different sounds, from those in Swedish-speaking homes," she says. "This is why learning a second language after, rather than with, the first is so difficult. The auditory map of the first language restricts the learning of a second language."
DeBroff says that while children engage in fun activities in a foreign language, such as singing, story telling or cooking projects, they naturally take in and start to use the new language comfortably and effortlessly. But this natural talent for learning language has a shelf life. As children approach puberty, neural connections develop, and the nature of language learning and storage changes, becoming less flexible, DeBroff says.
"Between the ages of 8 and 12, studies have shown that children lose the ability to hear and reproduce new sounds, resulting in a foreign-sounding accent in a second language learned," she says.
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