The Argument for Learning a Second Language at an Early Age

The Argument for Learning a Second Language at an Early Age

Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Foreign language education is no longer a foreign concept to today's professionals. As the world becomes more integrated, it is only a matter of time before one finds themselves confronted by a language that is not their native. Encouraging young children to learn foreign languages, therefore, has become a common policy among many individual nation-states - most likely to prepare themselves, and their future citizens, for the demand for language masteries. However, as a rational being, one cannot take an idea to be good for granted - it is one's responsibility to investigate and evaluate its validity. In this spirit of rational skepticism, this paper is set out with the purpose to identify the benefits as well as adverse consequences of teaching foreign languages early, and based on these finding to conclude with a judgment on whether or not the practice is reasonably valid.

Positive impacts

Over the course of this paper's research, the authors have come across a substantial number of publications with supporting evidence for learning a second language, especially at an early stage. The paper will divide the principal positive impacts of learning a second language at an early age into four principal categories: the impact on mental development, educational benefits, improved future opportunities, and socio-economic benefits from a macroscopic position.

The impact on mental development

Significant evidence from many publications demonstrates that multilingualism-a frequent result of learning foreign languages-has beneficial impact on the physiological development of the brain. In his research, Baker (2001) alludes to the balance theory. This theory argues that multiple languages are separate masses of knowledge, which inhabit the same region of the brain; therefore, the acquisition of a new language would result in the diminishment of the mother tongue (Baker, 2001, p. 163). To debunk this, Baker (2001) states that while having a logical appearance, the balance theory is psychologically invalid, due to the shared nature of many underlying core linguistic functionalities between different languages, essentially granting the human brain the capability to accommodate multiple languages. In other words, different languages share some core functions used in translating linguistic devices into ideas, thoughts, and meanings, and vice versa. Knowing many languages can enhance these functions as the multilingual constantly exercise these functions with multiple languages, giving them an advantage of practice over the monolingual, resulting in a sharper interaction between language devices and their represented ideas.

There are researches into the physiological detail whose results provide supporting evidence for the aforementioned argument. Exempli gratia, Mechelli et al. (2004) discovers, through structural brain imaging, that the virtue of being bilingual anatomically changes the brain - bilinguals' brains possess more grey matter in their language region, with increasing gain as the age of language learning gets earlier (as cited in Tochon, 2009, p. 654). The implication of this expanded physiological capacity for languages, combined with the role of language in effectively every cognitive and academic effort, could serve as the basis to explain the improvement in academic and cognitive skills, which will be explored in detail in the next category.

Finally, there is an inherent neurological advantage in learning a new language for early starters: young brains are much more capable at language acquisition compare to older brains. While statistical data have not yet been able to provide a specific age at which the rate of language acquisition declines sharply, observations have shown that there is a clear trend in the decline of language learning capacity as age advances (Penfield & Roberts, 1959; Lenneberg, 1967; Johnson & Newport, 1991 as cited in Tochon, 2009, p. 650-651).

Educational benefits

Concerning the educational benefits, learning a second language can extend its benefit to academic subjects other than languages as it helps develop the cognitive skills essential to academic endeavors. As introduced in the prior section, learning a new language puts the students at a constant challenge to think in two different languages - i.e. two different sets of lexes, grammatical structures, and cultural contexts. As this helps develop the learner's brain physically, as previously explored, this physiological enhancement manifests itself as an improved mental flexibility and better critical thinking. Bialystok and Martin (2004) demonstrate that the frequent exercise with multiple words concerning a single idea reinforces the ability to sort out a large volume of information, ignoring irrelevant perceptual information (e.g. subjective assumptions), while focusing attention to the relevant and appropriate (as cited in Tochon, 2009). This ability forms a core function of higher order thinking, a process vitally important in education.

Many studies in the correlation between academic performance and language learning support this rationale. In Nicoladis, Charbonner, and Popescu (2006) noted a number of such studies in their entry on the impact of second language at an early age on socio-cognitive and socio-emotional development. They demonstrate higher test performance on a variety of cognitive ability, including mental flexibility, non-verbal problem-solving tasks, understanding the conventional origin of names, distinguishing between semantic similarity and phonetic similarity, and capacity to judge the grammaticality of sentences (Hakuta, 1987; Bialystok & Majumder, 1998; Benelli & Gandolfi, 1979; Ben-Zeev, 1977; Bialystok, 1986; Galambos & Goldin-Meadows, 1990 as cited in Nicoladis, Charbonner & Popescu, 2006, p. 3).

The benefit also extends well into higher education, where the importance of higher order, critical thinking becomes more prevalent. As the paper previously discussed, learning a foreign language provides some valuable improvements to this cognitive faculty, logically it should also manifest in actual improvement in academic results. Indeed, according to the College Entrance Examination Board's (2004) profile data on 2004 college-bound high school seniors, the mean score on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests increased 100 points for students with four years or more studying a second language (p. 5). Given the prestige of the CEEB as a respectable authority in the field of education, this example should