You’ve probably heard the expression that little kids “soak up a new language like a sponge.” You put them in, say, a Spanish-language daycare and — BOOM! — next thing you know, they’re bilingual.
That almost sounds like magic. But is it really that simple? That’s what we’re exploring today.
The Difference Between Kids and Adults in Language Learning
Children typically acquire a second language just as they did their first language: in an immersive setting. Maybe they’re doing dual-language classes, or perhaps one parent uses the target language with the child.
I like how science writer Lindsay Patterson discusses the sponginess of kids in an article for The New York Times. Lindsay and her family moved from Austin, Texas, to Barcelona, Spain. She wanted her son to become trilingual in English, Spanish and Catalan, the regional language around Barcelona. Everybody assured her that this would be easy because — you guessed it — “kids are like sponges.”
But Lindsay soon started to worry that maybe her son wasn’t so “spongy.” He started at a Catalan school in September. But he didn’t speak his first sentence in that language until March! So Lindsay went looking for answers. She discovered something that surprised her. The whole “sponge” idea isn’t as straightforward as a lot of people believe.
Yes, childhood is the optimal time to learn a second language. But kids don’t learn a second language faster than adults do. Instead, kids learn a new language better than adults do, but not faster. That’s according to Dr. Karen Lichtman of Northern Illinois University. Her research is focused on language acquisition.
Here’s another way to think about this. Let’s say a parent and their young child both took Spanish lessons for a week. At the end of that week, the parent is going to know more Spanish than the child does. But, over time, the situation reverses. With more study, the parent does get pretty darn good at Spanish.
For example, they could easily invite their Spanish-speaking neighbor to a backyard cookout. But they would never be mistaken for a native speaker: The rules of English grammar are just too firmly cemented in their minds, and their mouth muscles have a hard time creating new sounds. Yes, some adults can attain a high level of fluency, but it takes a lot of practice.
Advantages that Help Kids Become Fluent
Now let’s go back to the kid in our example.
Let’s say this child gets plenty of Spanish exposure over the years. They go to a Spanish-language daycare and then immersion programs in school. They take supplemental online classes to practice speaking in small groups. They talk with friends who are native Spanish speakers. They listen to music and watch TV shows in Spanish.
By the time this child grows up, Spanish is natural and intuitive to them. It’s “wired” into them as deeply as their native language is. That’s because kids’ brains are a lot better at forming the new neural connections required for learning than our adult brains are. But kids also have other advantages on their side:
- Time. Between school programs, supplemental classes and entertainment in the target language, kids can be in an immersive environment all day. So of course they’re getting fluent. Almost anyone would. Adults rarely have this kind of time.
- Less pressure. Kids don’t stress out about understanding everything. They take what they can get from context or images or gestures, and they do their best.
- Accent. Mouth muscles and the ability to hear certain sounds are already fairly set by age 12. This is hard to change.
So, again, kids don’t learn faster, but they do learn better, in the long run.
Give Your Child the Gift of Spanish!
Patience Leads to Language Fluency
Now that you know this, you might be wondering what happened to Lindsay’s son at his school in Barcelona. It took a while for things to change for him. But after a year and a half of her son not saying much at school, Lindsay’s family got a big surprise. He started speaking Catalan and Spanish!
His sudden fluency seemed out of the blue. But Lindsay knew that it was actually due to everything he had been soaking up the whole time. Many fantastic language teachers, like Olly Richards, specifically suggest spending as much time as possible soaking up the language before trying to speak it.
Key Points About How Kids Become Fluent
What should you take away from Lindsay’s story if you’re a parent who wants your kid to be bilingual? There are two big things.
First, be realistic about your child’s language learning.
They’re not going to be fluent right away. And they might not learn in the same way — and at the same pace — that their friends do. After all, kids are different in how they learn just about everything, not just language. Maybe your kid makes linear progress with their target language. Maybe they have a sudden breakthrough like Lindsay’s son. Either way is just fine.
Second, immersion helps a lot.
We want to emphasize this part of the New York Times story:
Dr. Carmen Muñoz, Ph.D., a language researcher at the University of Barcelona … uses her public talks to deconstruct what she calls the myth of the sponge. “I show a picture with a sponge on a table and some water on the corner,” she said. To put it into words: Children need more than proximity to absorb a new language.
AMEN! That sponge isn’t going to absorb the water across the table. And your child isn’t going to absorb a new language unless they are immersed in it.
To help your kid become bilingual, give them every opportunity possible to hear and use the new language. If they hear it, but don’t have to use it, they will learn to understand it, but not speak it.
How Can My Children Be Immersed in a Spanish Environment?
That’s where we come in at TruFluency Kids. If your kids are learning Spanish currently, or you want them to, we offer online classes for kids ages 4 to 17.
Our lessons focus on listening and speaking. All of our instructors are native Spanish speakers. And they know how to keep kids engaged. with activities in Spanish, like singing, reading, playing and cooking. We’ll give your little “sponges” lots to absorb, as well as the time and patience to allow them to get confident SPEAKING.
If you’d like to see it for yourself, we invite your kids to take a trial class now! You can see our teachers in action. The trial feels very personalized, because there are no more than six students per class. After it has finished, you can join a Q & A for parents to answer any questions.
