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Study Finds Effects of Learning 2 Languages on Child Development
| February 10, 2012 | Posted by Anne Mercado under Child Development |
Did you know that raising kids to speak 2 languages affects their development?
The Study
Researchers worked with over 100 kids aged 6 years. Some of them were bilingual, while others were mono-lingual.
They were given several tasks that allowed researchers to see how being bilingual influences child development. More specifically the kids were measured on their verbal development and executive control.
Note: Executive control is defined as “an umbrella term for cognitive processes such as planning, working memory, attention, problem solving, verbal reasoning, inhibition, mental flexibility, multi-tasking, initiation and monitoring of actions” according to Wikipedia.
All kids in the study had almost the same social and economic background.
The Findings
- It took bilingual children longer to master each of the languages they were learning compared to their mono-lingual counterparts.
- Bilinguals scored better when it came to executive control tasks.
- Bilinguals were better at understanding the structure of languages (metalinguistic development).
Hi Anne!
I’ve been planning on posting something like this in my blog, as per request of one of Yue’s godparents. Haven’t had the chance to put it into writing, though.
And yes, I’m ok with kids learning other languages. In fact, Yue can speak and understand a few Hangul words already.
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That sounds great, looking forward to reading your post then. Also, what is Hangul?
It’s the Korean language.
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I figured! I don’t know why I even bothered asking haha.
My daughter has been learning French for a year and a half, since she was five. You learn a language differently when you are young as opposed to as an adult. I wish I had the opportunity to learn a language at a younger age, when it is easier. I wanted my daughter to have this opportunity to master a second language at a young age. It is amazing how much she has already learned. She is always correcting my accent! I have to explain to her that I speak with an American accent and the way her French teacher pronounces the word is the correct way! Lol!
I think that learning another language is great for cognitive ability and helps you have a larger range of vocabulary. I wish that all children could have the opportunity to learn another language!
That’s a wonderful story so thank you for sharing, Mel. I find it adorable that your daughter corrects you accent. You’re right when you say it’s much easier to learn a language when you’re younger.
Thank you for dropping by and have a wonderful weekend.
WE are raising our kids multilingual. From birth they are introduced to English, Mandarin and Cantonese. In school they are required to learn both English and Mandarin and I’ve been introducing them to the languages Japanese and Korean as through music infusion. I find that they do know how to differentiate between the different languages and it does help them to be able to communicate better in all 3 languages. We will be doing more Japanese (vocab) this year as my girl will be able to join in now that she’s 17mths old.
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Wow, that’s a lot of languages and it’s very good. Thank you for sharing your wonderful story.
It’s a frustration of mine to learn to speak another language. We had Spanish electives back in college, but that’s about it. At home, we’re bilingual in the sense that we speak Tagalog and English, but I wish for my son to learn another language when the timing is right and when he’s ready. He’s only 5 and will be entering big school next year.
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Yup, the kids here learn tagalog and English which is good. Other kids learn the dialects of their parents’ provinces as well. My suggestion is you can have your kiddo learn Spanish since we have a lot of tagalog words rooted from the Spanish language. It’s best to start while they’re young too.
Well, I am Vietnamese and my husband is Caucasian so I really want her to learn about her background as well as the importance of maintaining her culture, and language is a perfect way to do this.
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Learning a language is a nice way of keeping a culture. And your daughter will have an easy time learning both languages so good for her.
I think it is a good idea to have kids learn two or more languages. Maybe not at the same time but it’s better to do it while they are still young. Kids’ brains are like sponge, they absorb more. Me, being an adult finds it difficult to learn a new language but I try to. It’s good to work up the brain once in a while hehehe….I’m trying to learn Mandarin and it’s giving my jaws quite a challenge hahaha!
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Mandarin is difficult to learn! If you start young though and you have a parent who speaks it, you’ll learn way faster since you can take cues from intonation and facial expressions. Kids are sensitive to those two.
That’s why it’s taking me ages to learn, plus the fact that I have no one to practice it with hehehe. I’m just challenging myself. I had originally thought that if I could master the language, I could talk with my Chinese coach who teaches us Tai Chi before.
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Oh cool! Where do you learn tai chi?
I regret not taking Mandarin seriously when I was younger, I only know the Fookien dialect since we speak it at home. Now I want my kids to learn too, but they “reject” learning any new language and only want to speak English, and sometimes in Filipino.
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Mandarin is so difficult to learn especially if no one speaks it at home. About your kids, haha, it’s a bit frustrating when they refuse to do something but it would be good of they learned though. Thanks for dropping by
I love the idea of learning different languages since young. The more you learn, the more you are able to communicate to others. It may be a challenge, but worth learning.
Hi Yen, yes it’s definitely worth learning. Thank you for your comment.
My children are growing up with 3 languages in the home. On any given day interact with all 3. It amazes me how well they navigate between them all with ease as I struggle to keep up with conversations in my 30′s! What a blessing to grow up multilingual and not have to push through it as an adult. So nice to see someone getting the word out about these special kids. I would like to write about this topic as well as third culture kids on my blog too!
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3 languages is amazing! And yeah, where I’m from most of us speak at least 2 languages – English and Tagalog which is our main dialect. Let me know when you’re post on it is out live. Would love to read it!
That is interesting. I think it would be great if my son learned another language. When the toys have spanish on them, we encourage him to learn the language. WE dont’ know it, but my sister in law does, so someday maybe he will be able to talk with her.
He is learning to say 1-10 in spanish, as that is what we know well. 
I’ve always wished that I knew French well though. I worked with a french cook once, and he taught me some things. Was fun. 
Spanish is wonderful and if you can get the kiddo to converse with his aunt often, he’ll learn faster. Isn’t French a difficult language?
I grew up being bilingual. My first language was Spanish and then English came along when I started kindergarten in Los Angeles… as I grew up I had the darnest time learning a third.. With my sons I was not able to teach them Spanish because of a difference of opinion with their father… with my daughter it’s different. She started off learning sign language and English at the same time and introducing Spanish as well. I just want her to be able to communicate and learn as much as she can, in a relaxed manner.
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You can’t get more relaxed than learning a language at home. It’s the best way to do so
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Hi Anne,
first off, thanks for dropping by my site. I’m liking your website as there are tons of interesting to learn. Our daughter is 22months and is bilingual now I can tell. Hubby and I decided that we’d love for her to learn my native language aside from Spanish because we’d love for her to be commented to her roots. We both agreed that she’ll learn english later on as it is a very important language to learn. I did ready myself for her to start talking a little bit late since she’s learning two languages but I am really surprised that it wasn’t the case. I am just a bit worried that she’ll have a hard time learning english as her 3rd language. Bu we’ll see. I’ve been doing some research about multilingual kids and wanted to post about what I have learned but I just couldn’t complete the post as I want it to be accurate
Anyways, I love that I got to know you through blog… I’ll definitely frequent here!
Spanish Pinay
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It’s interesting to learn about how you will teach a 3rd language (timing, frequency, etc). To a degree I get teaching 2 languages, back home we have tagalog and English. But 3.. I can’t imagine how. Will definitely look forward to your post, then.
On dropping by site, you are welcome. It’s nice to explore and connect with more blogs & blog owners. And it would be wonderful to see you back here!
With the my first child, we spent a lot of time working with her on Spanish as her language skills were exceptional. It was so interesting for us and fun for her. I definitely think it helped in her language development. My second child had a significant speech delay, so we were unable to do the same with him as mastering one language seemed challenging enough. Now we just focus on exposing them to different cultures and beliefs, which I find equally beneficial and educational.
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It’s great to expose your kids to different cultures as it helps them become open minded. That’s also a nice topic to write about
Thanks for your awesome comment, Lynn.
hello, this is my first time to visit your site and yes, I find it interesting. I also have a 3 year old boy, he is turning 4 this april 17.
Hi Mia! It’s good to hear that you find the site interesting. About your boy, do you have big plans for his 4th birthday?
Hope to see you around here more often!
Welcome to Green Eggs & Moms, you’ll find that a lot of lovely ladies share their thoughts ’round here. So we’re hoping you do the same.
I am determined to raise my kids bilingual.
I am doing everything to keep them fluent in two languages.
I wrote an article about teaching kids another language http://mybusychildren.com/how-to-teach-children-a-foreign-language/
and about raising bilingual children – http://mybusychildren.com/raising-bilingual-children/
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Thanks for the links, will use them as references. By the way, if you skim through the previous comments, you’ll find lots of moms who have or are raising bilingual children.
These ladies (I’ve had the pleasure of knowing them all through voiceBoks) are very nice and accommodating, should you have questions about raising bilingual kids, feel free to ask them.
I have to add that teaching them two languages is helping them to learn other languages. They are now learning German (3rd language). I am amazed how easy it is for them to remember long and difficult words and how well they can pronounce them.
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Oh wow, I cannot imagine how one will teach children a 3rd language! Hats off to you!
This is so interesting! I would teach my children more than one language if I had the opportunity :0)
Glad you find this interesting, Elisa. It also gave me the idea that it might be good to teach the kiddo another language.
Yes, definitely! The child’s brain picks up a language more easily, and that is the time to do it. I actually got my BA in Linguistics, and this is a known fact:)
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Wow, Linguistics is absolutely cool. And there was an article before from one of the Gizmodo sites that said babies can understand their parents – it’s always amazing to learn that babies are much smarter than we think they are.