In order to help students gain fluency and comprehension in multiple languages, school districts should reconsider their approach to foreign language requirements and introduce them earlier.
In a time where multilingualism has become increasingly important for school requirements and career opportunities, many students who begin learning another language later in their education struggle to reach fluency. Research from MIT reveals that the brain is most responsive to learning another language’s grammar and structure before the age of 10. Cognitive scientists like Joshua Hartshorne have found that this critical period allows students to learn languages more effectively than those who begin later.
Taking advantage of this window when the brain is most receptive to learning new languages could help students expand their vocabulary and create a stronger foundation for advanced language skills. School districts can help with this by shifting the starting age for foreign language classes to early elementary school. Instead of waiting until middle or high school, introducing language classes in third or fourth grade– when children are at an ideal age for learning and retaining new information– would allow students to naturally build fluency and even reach proficiency. By the time they reach high school, these students will be better prepared for their foreign language courses and be able to engage with the material on a more comprehensive level.
Reflecting on my own experiences, I didn’t take a foreign language until the age of 14. By that time, most of my peers had been in language classes for two years already and there was a clear gap that I felt the need to catch up on. I knew it would be more effective for me to pursue a foreign language online, and while opting for Virtual High School (VHS) was the better choice, even the two-year delay made all the difference. My initial experience with learning Spanish was challenging, but switching to American Sign Language (ASL), something I was more motivated to learn, only highlighted how difficult it was to learn a new language once the critical period had closed.
The type of memory responsible for learning languages and other sentence structures, procedural memory, is strongest during childhood and allows for greater amounts of information to be stored for long periods of time. Procedural memory plays a critical role in the actual engagement of a language– the more exposure children have to another language, the more fluent and complete their vocabulary will become.
To introduce this shift, school districts should develop an organized plan to ensure that third and fourth-graders are exposed to other languages through an engaging and interactive curriculum that helps them appreciate different cultures in a fun way. Providing language instructors and passionate teachers may not be as easy, but districts can invest in college-aged educators and partnerships with universities to bring in enthusiastic foreign language interns. To help promote this, community organizations can sponsor this and help kids gain real-world experience in other languages and cultures. Not only will this help students meet the foreign language requirements set by many colleges and universities, but it will also grant them the necessary skills and perspectives to interact in a diverse community.
https://news.mit.edu/2018/cognitive-scientists-define-critical-period-learning-language-0501
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-procedural-memory-2795478