The concept of language has been one of the most well known and well studied areas of the nature vs nurture debate. While both sides propose interesting ideas and have a plentiful amount of research to back it up, it's actually a combination of both that makes the unique process of learning occur in children.
Even though the suggestion of teaching languages earlier and with more diversity is backed by research, the American school system continues to do otherwise. Rather than offering languages during students' younger years, most schools wait until middle or even high school to give students the option to learn a new language, and the number of languages offered is small, with the most common example being Spanish. Even at my own high school, the choice was limited to Spanish, German, or French, and continuing a language through all 4 years was very hard to do while also getting all of the other credits required for graduation.
In an article written by Judit Gervain, a researcher and member of the Speech Perception Group with a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, the ability to understand language is explained as starting between the 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy. At this time, the fetus' brain develops the ability to understand auditory stimuli. Because of this, newborn babies come out of the womb already having many linguistic abilities. For example, newborn babies are able to mimic any phonetic sound (which makes them able to learn any language), and able to distinguish the language(s) their mother spoke while from other languages.
Another concept put forth in the article is a child's critical period, which is the time in which a child is able to pick up new languages with more ease. The length of a critical period cannot be measured as a definite, concrete number of days, years, or even months because it is very different for each person. Research did find, however, that a "normal" baby loses their ability to mimic any phonetic sounds at around 3 months. External and internal factors can increase or decrease the span of a child's critical period, such as being a deaf child born to hearing parents. Because of the inability to start developing lexicon (vocabulary) and grammar skills while in the womb, they will have an elongated critical period.
An interesting bit of fact about the critical period is that it can also be affected by outside stimuli, such as the mother's conditions throughout her pregnancy. Also in the article, Gervain presented the data found in a study done by brain researchers in Canada, which found that depression and SRI medications (serotonin reuptake inhibitors, commonly used to help people with depression) affected an infant's critical period. A mother who was depressed, but medicated, would lead to a fetus that was able to discriminate both vowel and consonant sounds, while a non-medicated, non-depressed mother's fetus could only discriminate vowel sounds.
Another large impact on a child's critical and language abilities of children is teachers. A study done by professors at Vanderbilt University found that different curricula could enrich children's learning abilities (not only in language, but in general learning). In the study they used 3 different types of curricula: the OWL (Opening the World of Learning) which uses a lot of reading to help children understand concepts, EMT (Enhanced Milieu Teaching) which is a conversation-based intervention into a child's early language abilities (meaning the student/child is encouraged to repeat what the teacher or speech therapist says, in order to help them learn and retain meaning of the words being spoken), and a curriculum that mixed the two. Using vocabulary, reading, and other tests before, throughout, and at the end of observation, the researchers found that all of the children benefited from the different types of instruction, and that the classes which focused on using a mixture of the two teaching styles improved the most in the print knowledge area of schooling.
I strongly believe that the American school system should follow the examples set by other countries who allow (or even require) students to start learning languages at younger ages. For example in South Korea, English is taught as part of the everyday curriculum as early as first grade. It is key to start teaching languages during children’s formative younger years, during their critical period, so that they can use the skills they gain in learning how to learn a language to apply to learning other topics. In a language class, if you can't quite pronounce a word you're taught to sound it out. If you don't understand the meaning of a word, you are given a picture or string of other words to use in association so you will remember the word. These are a few examples of skills that are useful to more subjects that just language. Through more research and the efforts of organizations such as OWL and EMT, in the future we can hopefully look forward to a more multilingual world.
Sources
Gervain, Judit. "Plasticity in early language acquisition: the effects of prenatal and early childhood experience." Current Opinion in Neurobiology 35 (2015): 13-20. ERIC ProQuest. Web. 12 October 2016.
Weikuma, Whitney M. et al. "Prenatal Exposure to Antidepressants and Depressed Maternal Mood Alter Trajectory of Infant Speech Perception." PNAS. PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 31 May 2012. Web. 14 October 2016.
Kaiser, Ann, et al. "ERIC ED518192: The Effects of Two-Language Focused Preschool Curricula on Children's Achievement through First Grade : ERIC : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive." Internet Archive. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.
