INTERIM results of an international research project that looks at bilingual education reveal that children can learn a second language as early as preschool, Science Daily recently reported.
ELIAS (Early Language and Intercultural Acquisition Studies), which handled the project, was awarded 300,000 euros ($442,000) by the European Union last year to investigate children’s bilingual education and intercultural awareness. This was done with observational studies and language assessments at six bilingual preschools in Germany, Sweden and Belgium, where the staff are teachers from the respective country, but at least one teacher is a native speaker of English. Data is also collected from nurseries in the UK. The researchers use a concept called "immersion teaching", whereby children are addressed in each language by the native speaker and asked to respond in that language. Children’s progress in English is measured through a receptive vocabulary test and a grammar task that was designed within the project. So far, 266 preschool children aged between three and five have taken part in the tests.
The researchers found that although not all the preschool groups performed equally well in the tests, and there was a large amount of individual variation in children’s comprehension of vocabulary and grammatical phenomena, there was clear evidence that it is feasible for children to start studying a second language in a preschool context, using immersion methods.
Christina Schelletter, the head of the UK investigation, is a senior lecturer in English language and communication in the School of Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire. Schelletter said, "Immersion is the best and most successful method of foreign language learning at an early age. The natural learning abilities of young children as well as their enthusiasm promise rapid and successful acquisition of the second language."
ELIAS said the final results will be published for general public use in 2010.
