"There's a window of opportunity for language acquisition, says professor Charles Grove of West Chester University, who specializes in teaching foreign language teachers.....Professor Grove says that while you can get the basics of another language later in life, it's starting young that gives the best chance for high level, native-speaker proficiency."
For some reason, Charles Grove says, foreign language classes are being viewed as special commodities. The money that could pay for those classes instead goes towards traditional subjects like mathematics and language arts. However, there is an increasing need for multi-lingual speakers in today's world. And whether it's for pure pleasure, or for career purposes, adults in the US and across the world are scrambling to learn a second, third, or fourth language.
A study led by Rachel Mayberry of McGill University, along with Elizabeth Lock of the University of Ottawa and Hena Kazmi of the University of Western Ontario in 2002 concluded that new language learning is very much linked to early language experience. They collected data that showed that people who were born deaf had a more difficult time learning sign language than people who became deaf later in life had higher results in ASL performance. Thus it could be concluded that some kind of language experience early in life allowed for better learning in the future. This of course explains why we are able to start learning a language at any point in life. But it might also imply that those of us who hit plateaus simply didn't have enough exposure to different languages. Overall, however, childhood seems to be the most conducive time to learn languages, as the brain is at an optimal stage to form new neural connections.
So with all this reasoning supporting language-learning early on in life, why are schools cutting foreign language classes? The answer may lie in how we learn languages. A study published in 2007 in the journal Psychological Science, states that we face another language barrier called first-language attrition, in which we momentarily forget words in our native language after spending time being immersed in a foreign one. It is quite a peculiar mechanism. Our brains actually inhibit, not forget, our native languages in order to help learn new ones:
"In the study, native English speakers who had completed at least one year of college level Spanish were asked to repeatedly name objects in Spanish. The more the students were asked to repeat the Spanish words, the more difficulty they had generating the corresponding English labels for the objects. In other words, naming objects in another language inhibits the corresponding labels in the native language, making them more difficult to retrieve later."
However, the article continues to say that as we achieve fluency in both languages, the necessity for native-language inhibition becomes superfluous. My hypothesis, based on this study, is that elementary schools are facing problems with English-inhibition in the early stages of learning a foreign language. Though if we allow the children to continue studying the language until they become bilingual, we would see that this inhibition would cease to exist. Schools should maintain a strong support for foreign language classes, as these will only become more useful in years to come, as diversity in the US increases.
Articles:
Schools:
http://www.kyw1060.com/In-Elementary-Schools--Fewer-Foreign-Language-Cour/6810706
Language Experience Study:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020502072204.htm
Language Inhibition:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070118094015.htm
Obviously, I support the idea of increasing elementary school foreign language programs. However, in a down turned economy, there have to be some concessions made and programs cut. How do you think that schools can best cope with decreased budgets but still maintain language programs? Would you advocate for a combined program - so at the same time kids are learning both spanish and say mathematics?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you though - I think that more parents and school officials should be aware of the positive effects learning new languages has on their kids.
As Annie said, dealing with anything relating to education reform and development in this economy poses some major issues. I would say that non-English language learning should be a high priority for students in school, as language competency bodes extremely well for not only effective person to person interaction but also future jobs. If students are able to be culturally competent and relate to people of many backgrounds, in addition to being very marketable for a job in the globalized world, that would be ideal. This might mean cutting back on the funding for other programs in order to make foreign language a reality. More than that, however, I feel as though an examination of schools' allocation of funds (and moving funds more towards direct teaching and education, as opposed to unnecessary administrative costs) is extremely necessary.
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