Advantages of early multilingualism
One, who learns a foreign language in the early years, has a decided wider horizon. This is the result of several studies, which deal with early language acquisition.
Early learning of a foreign language activates the natural language acquisition mechanisms and does not only have advantages for the personal development during schooling. Multilingual children are considered on a long-term basis as more efficient, more tolerant towards other cultures and linguistically more versatile.
Modern research results prove that children, who grow up with several languages also have better cognitive abilities in general:
- they have a greater mental flexibility
- they can think more abstractly
- they are superior in divergent thinking; they are thus able to take in several different perspectives better
- they exhibit a higher social sensitivity
- they have a larger language consciousness
Multilingualism does not only promote cognitive and creative processes, but also leads to a better communicative ability in the mother tongue itself.
Children are able to deduce meanings and structures from the context. They reflect about the languages and try them out hands on. They can then learn other foreign languages better than children, who grow up only monolingual.
Even, if the child loses the intensive contact to the foreign language during the basic school years, it will learn the language better and faster than the other children once the teaching is resumed in the secondary school.
Bilingualism
Learning of languages happens either “automatically” (Mother tongue) or acquisition based on laborious compilation. BILINGOO English teaches as a second language with the help of the immersion method. This is considered currently to be the most successful language teaching method world-wide and is particularly suitable for children, since the new language is not taught as a foreign language like in school in a scholarly manner, but like how a real secondary language is lived.
The central point of this method is teaching in context, the so called Contextualization, i.e. the language linked with the action. The Mentors, mostly native speakers reinforce everything that they communicate orally through mimicry, gestures and showing. The children deduce the language thereby on their own independently item by item from the context of the respective situation. Thus the natural sort of the language acquisition is simulated. The children are constant in contact with the new language and learn to use it in different areas.
No skills are demanded from them, which they do not already have. They understand the situation thru the activity. The immersion method thus makes intuitive learning of language possible. It is particularly suitable for the children, because the children are introduced to the language without learning and performance stress.
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