by Honi A.

Created on: October 09, 2009

According to some recent studies, scientists have discovered that children are processing language information in a different region of the brain than adults. Let me explain: a part of our brain controls the automatic things that we do, like brushing our teeth or driving, or walking in a certain manner etc. and the older we get the harder it gets for the brain to learn new stuff and catalogue them as automatic so we'll be able to do them on a regular basis.

This area is called the "deep motor area" and this is the area children use to learn a new language. Is as if the new language is their second nature. Even more, when a baby is born, he has the ability to learn and speak any language existent as long as he hears it around him. So let's say our baby has french parents but they live in Russia: from his parents he will learn french and from the outside world he will learn russian. In his first years it will be a bit confusing because he will not be able to separate the languages but as he grows up he'll be able to tell which is which. And while in school he'll still be able to learn one or two more languages.

Also apparently until the age of six or seven children can acquire an authentical pronunciation, so teaching our child the sounds and accents of other languages until this age may turn out to be very valuable later in life when he'll attempt learning the language. A very good strategy to help our children learn this accents is to play them music in the language we want them later to learn. I suggest no more than 3 languages so that the kid won't get confused. Or, if he likes cartoons you can play them in a different language (that's how i learned english)

For adults is a little bit harder, because they are already used to speak their mother language and their mouth and tongue are accustomed to pronounce sounds in a specific manner. As I said the "deep motor area" tends to almoust shut itself after the age of eighteen. So the brain has to assign a new area for this process, a more active area. As a consequence adults loose the ability to think in a foreign language and take each phrase and translate it word by word in their native language.

So, knowing now this facts I believe the best thing we can do is to teach our children as early as possible at least one foreign language so they won't have problems learning it as adults.

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