My mother tongue is Taiwanese and I learn Mandarine at school. Using Mandarine to learn English was the most difficult part because there was no environment where I could actually use it. After I came to Canada at 19, I had an environment to use English but very difficult to change certain accent and certain pronunciation. I guess the most ideal education for kids is to learn Chinese until the age of 15 and then move to English speaking countries.
Interesting.. I lived in Japan when I was 3-5, and learned English much later. My English is far better than my Japanese now, but I still often find myself feeling more at ease when speaking or reading Japanese. Maybe 5-10 is just as critical for a kid to stabilize a language and keep it permanently in the brain. According to the book The Language Instinct, children don't "learn" languages as we adults do. They actually "re-invent" the language in their brains as they adapt to the environment.
@glumraidh3 жыл бұрын
According to developmental psychology, the most productive age for kids to learn languages is before 7 or 9. Of interest is, it doesn't need to be formal learning - any form of consistent exposure would train their brain to recognize the language patterns. Kids learn by patterns. That's another reason many kids lose interest when schools focus too much on techniques i.e., grammar. Another interesting thing is that once the kids have been exposed to a language before 9, they're able to pick it up more easily at a later stage, even if they may have "forgotten" it. The "memory" of the language is embedded in the brain. 😁
@misterchamstandupcomedy55602 жыл бұрын
To me, I have difficulty... mentally ... while I am reading... coz... I adapted to the way to learn languages through listening ... I used to read Chinese and English quite a lot at school, but after that... I rarely read anything.... I guess children learn a language fast becoz they keep using the simple sentences without thinking... it's a mental process.
@chenalvision2 жыл бұрын
@@misterchamstandupcomedy5560 It's a common problem. I can still read perfectly, but I often forget how to write certain Chinese characters when I pick up a pen. I believe reading (and writing) is something we have to put effort to learn, even as kids, because it's not something "built-in" to human brains. Written languages are relatively new, most were only invented a few thousand years ago.