Job Discussion Forums

artemisia · Joined: 04 Nov 2008 Posts: 875 Location: the world

When my niece and nephew were very young they were in a situation where they grew up speaking a mix languages. Both seemed to have a remarkable grasp of at least three of four languages. One of these languages has become the dominant or native language and that's the one they've received their schooling in, but their ability continues in the others in speaking. Although I don't know that they'd have equal writing capacity in all, I must say I envy them!

There's a school of thought that says that humans have a window of opportunity or a critical period with languages � to learn to native level capacity - that is. Once the critical period passes, that�s it. You might be able to take a second language to near native capacity if you are immersed for long enough. If this is true, it makes sense to expose children as young as possible to at least one other language.

santi84 · Joined: 14 Mar 2008 Posts: 1317 Location: under da sea

MotherF · Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 3:11 pm Post subject:

It was previously thought that bilingual children lagged behind in language development because they were previously evaluated by monolingual "experts" Who were obviouly only able to evaluate half of the child's language.