9.2 Language Learning

Learning language is the premier cognitive accomplishment of early childhood. Two-year-olds use short, telegraphic sentences (“Want cookie,” “Where Daddy go?”), omitting adjectives, adverbs, and articles. By contrast, 5-year-olds seem able to say almost anything (see At About This Time).

A Sensitive Time

Brain maturation, myelination, scaffolding, and social interaction make early childhood ideal for learning language. As you remember from Chapter 1, scientists once thought that early childhood was a critical period for language learning—the only time when a first language could be mastered and the best time for a second or third one.

It is easy to understand why they thought so. Young children have powerful motivation and ability to sort words and sounds into meaning (theory-theory), which makes them impressive language learners. For that reason, teachers and parents should converse with children many hours each day. However, the critical-period hypothesis is false: Many people learn languages after age 6 (Singleton & Munoz, 2011).

Instead, early childhood is a sensitive period for language learning—for rapidly and easily mastering vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Young children are called “language sponges” because they soak up every drop of language they encounter.

Indeed, there are “multiple sensitive periods … auditory, phonological, semantic, syntactic, and motor systems, along with the developmental interactions among these components” (Thomas & Johnson, 2008, p. 2). All of these sensitive periods facilitate language learning. Thus, language learning is an example of dynamic systems, as every part of the developmental process influences every other part.

Preoperational thinking—which is not logical—helps with language. For example, in a conversation I had with Asa, he said a toy lion was a mother. I said it couldn’t be a mother because it had a mane. Rather than realizing that I might know more about sex differences in lions than he did, or questioning the new word (mane), he confidently insisted that this particular lion was a mother with a mane.

Asa is not alone. One of the valuable (and sometimes frustrating) traits of young children is that they talk about many things to adults, to each other, to themselves, to their toys—unfazed by misuse, mispronunciation, ignorance, stuttering, and so on (Marazita & Merriman, 2011). Language comes easily partly because preoperational children are not self-critical about what they say. Egocentrism has advantages; this is one of them.

The Vocabulary Explosion

The average child knows about 500 words at age 2 and more than 10,000 at age 6 (Herschensohn, 2007). That’s more than six new words a day. These are averages. Estimates of vocabulary size at age 6 vary from 5,000 to 30,000: Some children learn six times as many words as others. Always, however, vocabulary builds quickly, and comprehension is more extensive than speech.

After painstakingly learning one word at a time between 12 and 18 months of age, children develop interconnected categories for words, a kind of grid or mental map that makes speedy vocabulary acquisition possible. The process is called fast-mapping (Woodward & Markman, 1998) because, rather than figuring out the exact definition after hearing a word used in several contexts, children hear a word once and quickly stick it into a category in their mental language grid.

Language mapping is not precise. For example, children rapidly connect new animal names close to already-known animal names, without knowing all the details. Thus, tiger is easy to map if you know lion, but a leopard might be called a tiger. A trip to the zoo facilitates fast-mapping of animal names because zoos scaffold learning by placing similar animals near each other.

Picture books offer many opportunities for scaffolding and fast-mapping as well. A mentor might point out the next steps in the child’s ZPD, such as that tigers have stripes and leopards spots, or, for an older child, that calico cats are almost always female and that lions with manes are always male.

Fast-mapping begins before age 2, and accelerates over childhood, as each new word makes it easier to map other words (Gershkoff-Stowe & Hahn, 2007). Generally, the more linguistic clues children have, the better their fast-mapping is (Mintz, 2005).

This process explains children’s learning of color words. Generally, 2-year-olds already know some color words, but they fast-map them (Wagner et al., 2013). For instance, “blue” could be used for some greens or greys. It is not that children cannot see the hues. Instead, they apply words they know to broad categories, and they have not yet learned the boundaries that adults use. Thus, all women may be called mothers, all cats can be kitties, and all bright colors red. As one team of scientists explains, adult color words are the result of slow-mapping (Wagner et al., 2013), which is not what young children do.

Closely related to fast-mapping is a phenomenon called logical extension: After learning a word, children use it to describe other objects in the same category. One child told her father she had seen some “Dalmatian cows” on a school trip to a farm. Instead of criticizing her foolishness, he remembered the Dalmatian dog she had petted the weekend before.

Bilingual children who don’t know a word in the language they are speaking often insert a word from the other language. That may be considered wrong, but actually that is an example of the child’s drive to communicate. To call it “Spanglish” when a Spanish-speaking person uses some English words deprecates a logical way to explain something (Otheguy & Stern, 2010). Soon children realize who understands which language—and they avoid substitutions when speaking to a monolingual person.

Some English words are particularly difficult for every child —who/whom, have been/had been, here/there, yesterday/tomorrow. More than one child has awakened on Christmas morning and asked, “Is it tomorrow yet?” A child told to “stay there” or “come here” may not follow instructions because the terms are confusing. Better might be to say, “Stay there on that bench” or “Come here to hold my hand.” Other languages also have difficult concepts that are expressed in words; children everywhere learn them eventually.

Extensive study of children’s language abilities finds that fast-mapping is only one of many techniques that children use to learn language: When a word does not refer to an object on the mental map, children find other ways to master it (Carey, 2010). If a word does not refer to anything the child can see or otherwise sense or act on, it may be ignored. Always, however, action helps. A hole is to dig; love is hugging; hearts beat.

Because understanding the printed word is crucial, a meta-analysis of about 300 studies analyzed which activities in early childhood aided reading later on. Both vocabulary and phonics (precise awareness of the sounds of words) predicted literacy (Shanahan & Lonigan, 2010). Five specific strategies and experiences were particularly effective for children of all income levels and ethnicities:

1. Code-focused teaching. In order for children to read, they must “break the code” from spoken to written words. It helps if they learn the letters and sounds of the alphabet (e.g., “A, alligators all around” or, conventionally, “B is for baby”).
2. Book reading. Vocabulary as well as familiarity with pages and print will increase when adults read to children, allowing questions and conversation.
3. Parent education. When teachers and other professionals teach parents how to stimulate cognition (as in book reading), children become better readers. Adults need to use words to expand vocabulary much more often than to control behavior.
4. Language enhancement. Within each child’s zone of proximal development, mentors can expand vocabulary and grammar, based on the child’s knowledge and experience.
5. Preschool programs. Children learn from teachers, songs, excursions, and other children. (We discuss the pros and cons of early education soon, but every study finds that language advances for children who attend preschool.)

We noted in Chapter 6 that grammar includes structures, techniques, and rules that communicate meaning. Knowledge of grammar is essential for learning to speak, read, and write. A large vocabulary is useless unless a person knows how to put words together.

By age 2, children understand the basics. For example, English-speaking children know word order (subject/verb/object), saying, “I eat apple,” rather than any of the five other possible sequences of those three words. They use plurals, tenses (past, present, and future), and nominative, objective, and possessive pronouns (I, me, and mine or my).

Some 3-year-olds use articles (the, a, an) correctly, although proper article use in English is bewilderingly complex. Each aspect of language acquisition (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.) follows a particular learning path as the months roll by.

One reason for variation in particulars of language learning is that several parts of the brain are involved, each myelinating at a distinct rate. Furthermore, many genes and alleles affect comprehension and expression. In general, genes affect expressive (spoken or written) language more than receptive (heard or read) language. Thus, some children are relatively talkative or quiet because they inherit that tendency, but experience (not genes) determines what they understand (Kovas et al., 2005).

Children are eager to apply rules of grammar as soon as they learn them. For example, English-speaking children quickly learn to add an s to form the plural: Toddlers follow that rule when they ask for two cookies or more blocks.

Soon they add an s to make the plural of words they have never heard before, even nonsense words. If preschoolers are shown a drawing of an abstract shape, told it is called a wug, and are then shown two of these shapes, they say there are two wugs. In keeping with the distinction between reception and expression, very young children realize words have a singular and a plural before they can express it (Zapf & Smith, 2007).

However, sometimes children apply the rules of grammar when they should not. This error is called overregularization. By age 4, many children overregularize that final s, talking about foots, tooths, and mouses. This signifies knowledge, not stupidity: Many children first say words correctly (feet, teeth, mice), repeating what they have heard. Later, they apply the rules of grammar, and overregularize, assuming that all constructions follow the rules (Ramscar & Dye, 2011).

More difficult to learn is an aspect of language called pragmatics—knowing which words, tones, and grammatical forms to use with which person (Siegal & Surian, 2012). In some languages, it is essential to know which set of words to use when a person is older, or not a close friend or family member.

For example, French children learn the difference between tu and vous in early childhood. Although both words mean “you,” tu is used with familiar people, while vous is the more formal expression. In other languages, children learn that there are two words for grandmother, depending on whose mother it is.

English does not make those distinctions, but pragmatics are important for early-childhood learning nonetheless. Children learn that there are many practical differences in vocabulary and tone on the context and, once theory of mind is established, on the audience. Knowledge of pragmatics is evident when a 4-year-old is pretending to be a doctor, a teacher, or a parent. Each role requires different speech.

Learning Two Languages

Language-minority people (those who speak a language that is not their nation’s dominant one) suffer if they do not also speak the majority language. In the United States, those who are not proficient in English have lower school achievement, diminished self-esteem, and inadequate employment, as well as many other problems. Fluency in English can erase these liabilities; fluency in another language then becomes an asset.

In the United States in 2011, 22 percent of schoolchildren spoke a language other than English at home, with most of them (77 percent) also speaking English well, according to their parents (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011b) (see Figure 9.4).

Mastering English: The Younger, the Better Of all the schoolchildren whose home language is not English, this is the proportion who, according to their parents, speak English well. Immigrant children who attend school almost always master English within five years.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011b.

The percentage of bilingual children is higher in many other nations. In Canada and many African, Asian, and European nations, by sixth grade most schoolchildren are bilingual, and some are trilingual. Language learning is aided by school instruction, but generally, the earlier a child learns a second language, the more easily and quickly the learning occurs.

Unlike a century ago, everyone now seeking U.S. citizenship must be able to speak English. Some people believe that national unity is threatened by language-minority speakers. By contrast, other people emphasize that international understanding is crucial and that ideally everyone should speak several languages.

Should a nation have one official language, several, or none? Individuals and nations have divergent answers. Switzerland has three official languages; Canada has two; India has one national language [Hindi], but many states of India also have their own, for a total of 28 official languages; the United States has none.

Some adults have expressed the concern that young children who are taught two languages might become semilingual, not bilingual, “at risk for delayed, incomplete, and possibly even impaired language development” (Genesee, 2008, p. 17). Others have used their own experience to argue the opposite, that “there is absolutely no evidence that children get confused if they learn two languages” (Genesee, 2008, p. 18).

This second position has gained increasing research support in the past decade. Soon after the vocabulary explosion, children who have heard two languages since birth usually master two distinct sets of words and grammar, along with each language’s pauses, pronunciations, intonations, and gestures. Proficiency is directly related to how much language they hear (Hoff et al., 2013).

No doubt early childhood is the best time to learn a language or languages. Neuroscience finds that in adults who learned a second language when they were young, both languages are located in the same areas of the brain. They manage to keep the two languages separate, activating one and temporarily inhibiting the other when speaking to a monolingual person (Crinion et al., 2006). They may be a millisecond slower to respond when they switch languages, but their brains function better overall. Being bilingual in childhood may even provide some resistance to Alzheimer’s dementia in old age (Bialystok et al., 2009).

Learning a second language in high school or college, as required of most U.S. children, is too late for fluency. After childhood, the logic of language is quite possible to grasp, so adults can learn the rules of forming the past tense, for instance, but metaphors and exceptions to the rules are particularly elusive after puberty. The human brain is designed to learn language best in childhood.

Pronunciation is particularly hard to master after childhood, in any language. However, do not equate pronunciation and spoken fluency with comprehension and reading ability. Many adults who speak the majority language with an accent are quite knowledgeable in the language and culture (difference is not deficit). From infancy on, hearing is more acute than vocalization. Almost all young children mispronounce whatever language they speak, blithely unaware of their mistakes.

In early childhood, all children transpose sounds (magazine becomes mazagine), drop consonants (truck becomes ruck), convert difficult sounds to easier ones (father becomes fadder), and drop complex sounds (cherry become terry). Mispronunciation does not impair fluency primarily because young children are more receptive than expressive—they hear better than they talk. For instance, when 4-year-old Rachel asked for a “yeyo yayipop,” her father repeated, “You want a yeyo yayipop?” She replied, “Daddy, sometimes you talk funny.”

Schools in all nations stress the dominant language, and language-minority parents fear that their children will make a language shift, becoming more fluent in the school language than in their home language. Language shift occurs everywhere, if theory-theory leads children to conclude that their first language is inferior to the new one (Bhatia & Ritchie, 2013).

Bilingual Learners These are Chinese children learning a second language. Could this be in the United States? No, this is a class in the first Chinese-Hungarian school in Budapest. There are three clues: the spacious classroom, the trees outside, and the letters on the book.

ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Some language-minority children in Mexico shift to Spanish, some First Nations (as native tribes are called) children in Canada shift to English, some Chinese-speaking children in the United States shift to English. In China, all speak Chinese, but some shift from one dialect to another. No shift is inevitable: The attitudes and practices of parents and the community are crucial.

Remember that young children are preoperational: They center on the immediate status of their language (not on future usefulness or past glory), on appearance more than substance. No wonder many shift toward the language of the dominant culture. Since language is integral to culture, if a child is to become fluently bilingual, everyone who speaks with the child should show appreciation of both cultures.

Becoming a balanced bilingual, which means speaking two languages equally well with no audible hint of the other language, is accomplished by millions of young children in many nations. This ability benefits their intellectual flexibility (Bialystok & Viswanathan, 2009; Pearson, 2008).

The basics of language learning—the naming and vocabulary explosions, fast-mapping, overregularization, scaffolding—apply to every language children learn. Although skills in one language can be transferred to make learning another easier, “transfer is neither automatic nor inevitable” (Snow & Kang, 2006, p. 97). To become balanced bilinguals, children need to hear twice as much talk as usual (Hoff et al., 2013).

The same practices can make a child fluently trilingual, as some 5-year-olds are. One parent might spend hours each day talking and reading to a child in French, for instance, the other parent in English, and that child might play with friends at a Spanish-speaking preschool. The result is a child who speaks three languages without an accent—except whatever accent their mother, father, and friends have.

Bilingual children and adults are advanced in theory of mind and executive functioning, probably because they need to be more reflective and strategic when they speak. However, sheer linguistic proficiency does not necessarily lead to cognitive advances (Bialystock & Barac, 2011). Cognition depends on many aspects of education, as described in the following section.