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For years it has been thought that teaching a foreign language to preschool-age children would be futile. However, recent studies indicate that the best time for a child to learn another language is in the first three to four years of life. Here are some important reasons for exposing children to early second language learning.

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When I think of the benefits of learning a new language I usually think of the mental and academic rewards that come with learning something like Spanish, Mandarin, etc. Maybe If I ponder a bit I'll remember that there are probably some multilingual benefits in the workplace too. 

But the truth is learning another language changes us in profound ways..... Read more

THOSE who want to learn a foreign language, or want their children to, often feel they are racing against the clock. People seem to get worse at languages as they age. Children often learn their first without any instruction, and can easily become multilingual with the right exposure. But the older people get, the harder it seems to be. Witness the rough edges on the grammar of many immigrants even after many years in their new countries.
 

My son is in kindergarten and spends half of his day learning in English and half in Chinese at one of the oldest Chinese immersion programs in the country. I didn't think twice about entering the lottery for admission—in fact, it's a large part of the reason I left New York City and moved across the country to Portland, Oregon, where 10 percent of public school students are enrolled in immersion programs.

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So, you have decided to give your child the gift of languages. Congratulations, your child will thank you for it! As promised in our previous post about raising multilingual children, in this article we are going to dive deeper into language immersion preschool programs and the reasons why they are a great idea!

Let’s start with a quick rundown on what language immersion preschool programs are, exactly, and how they differ from traditional language classes. A traditional class means that one class (the language itself, e.g. Spanish) is taught in the foreign language. The other classes in the child care or preschool program are taught in English. The result is that a relatively small percentage of the child’s day is spent speaking Spanish.

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