SPEAKING TWO (OR MORE) LANGUAGES IS BETTER THAN ONE “Language does not need to be only accepted. It needs to be explored, expanded, and celebrated.” —Dr. Alma Flor Ada, professor emerita, University of San Francisco
KEY FINDINGS
> > One of the greatest feats of human development is language learning. Children are well equipped, beginning at birth, to accomplish the complex task of learning language (Lust, 2006). > > The benefits of growing up bilingual or multilingual are many, including a better working memory, enhanced executive function, ability to switch easily from task to task, and to persist in a challenging task. As Linda Espinosa (2013) states, “All children appear to benefit cognitively, linguistically, culturally, and economically from learning more than one language.” > > Learning a second language does not cause language confusion, language delay, or cognitive deficit, which have been concerns in the past. In fact, according to studies at the Cornell Language Acquisition Lab (CLAL), children who learn a second language can maintain attention in spite of outside stimuli better than children who know only one language (Lust, 2006). > > Children will learn two languages best if they know that both languages are important and valued. Children also need to have lots of fun and meaningful opportunities to talk, read, and pretend-write in both languages (Freeman and Freeman et al., 2016). Learning a second language also means learning a second culture and new ways of being.
AUTHENTIC TEXTS AND TEXT COM- PLEXITY
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EARLY READERS SPEAKING TWO (OR MORE) LANGUAGES IS BETTER THAN ONE
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