Ever thought about introducing your child to a second or third language? Here at UKETS we currently offer English and Mandarin Chinese as a second language (or as an additional language) and have thought to inform parents of the ‘best time’ or ‘critical period’ for you to introduce your child to an additional language. 
According to a study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), there is a ‘critical period’ for learning an additional language. People remain adept learners until the age of 17 or 18 where their ability drops according to their new study. This study suggests that the ‘critical period’ (which is a period during someone’s development in which a particular skill is believed to be most readily acquired), is a lot longer than what scientists initially thought.
The study also found that it is practically impossible for someone to achieve native-like proficiency unless they had been learning at least by the age of 10. The co-author of the study Professor Joshua Hartshorne explained that
“We don’t see very much difference between people who start at birth and people who start at 10 [years old], but we start seeing a decline after that.”
These findings were based on a very interesting but simple grammar quiz online called “Which English?”. This was designed by the scientists and posted to Facebook and had a sample size of nearly 670,000 people of different ages and nationalities and dialects were detected or worked out using their algorithm which used grammatical errors that the participants had made.
The study found that adults are still good at learning foreign languages but are not able to reach the level of a native speaker if they begin learning as a teenager or adult.
Although researchers were able to come to the conclusion that there is a critical period, they were unable to establish the cause of the end to that critical period at 17 or 18 years old. It was suggested that it could be a result of cultural factors or even biological changes.
Co-author Tenenbaum added that
“There’s roughly a period of being a minor that goes up to about age 17 or 18 in many societies. After that, you leave your home, maybe you work full time, or you become a specialised university student. All of those might impact your learning rate for any language.”
This may be true in British and western culture but may not a determining factor in other cultures, however what we can infer is that the younger the better! Encourage your child to pick up a second language, improve their cognitive and perceptual skills.
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