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Misleading statement 1: "It is very difficult for babies to imitate and learn many languages, and their recognition ability is poor. The multilingual family environment makes it difficult for the baby to speak ... "
This statement was very common before 10, mainly from the cognitive load theory. It is believed that multi-language environment will aggravate children's cognitive load and make them confused and confused, that is, "dizziness", which will lead to speaking late.
In fact, this statement has been denied by a large number of studies in recent 10 years. Various studies from the perspective of language development and brain development even found the opposite conclusion: bilingual (multilingual) learning is more beneficial! (PS: knowledge update is very important! )
Each language uses different phonemes. For example, some of our Chinese pronunciations are not found in English. I can't help laughing every time I see Americans make a "spin" or "spin" sound. When I took Russian as an elective course in college, I had a headache about their unique "vibrato".
Many studies show that (Werker, Yeung,&; Yoshida, 2065438+02; Palmetar ,20 12; Pascalis tell. , 20 14), babies can recognize the phoneme pronunciation differences of all languages in the world, and this ability will gradually weaken as children become more and more exposed to a particular language.
In other words, the baby's phoneme recognition ability is not only inferior to that of adults, but also beats us to pieces ... Of course, we adults don't have to be discouraged. If you learn other languages, you may have to work harder on pronunciation, but your application understanding ability is certainly not inferior!
Aside from the comparison between infants and adults, what are the effects of monolingual environment and bilingual environment on children themselves?
Studies have shown that (Kuhl et al. , 20 1 1), although babies who grew up in a monolingual environment can distinguish phonetic phonemes in 6-9 months, by about 12 months, their ability to recognize phonemes in the second language began to weaken.
On the contrary, babies in bilingual environment can't recognize the phonemes of two languages well after 6-9 months, but they can recognize the phonemes of two languages well after 10- 12 months, and their ability will continue to develop as long as the bilingual environment continues, which is relatively weak for monolingual babies.
In the convenient comparison of vocabulary, the research shows that (Howell, bornstein,&; Putnick, 20 13), monolingual babies and bilingual babies have the same overall vocabulary in the early stage.
For example, when a Chinese-speaking baby can speak the word 10, a Chinese-speaking baby and an English-speaking baby also have the word 10, but the word 10 is the sum of Chinese and English words, which means that their total vocabulary is the same, but the foreign exchange settlement structure is different.
Seeing this, are there any parents worried? Doesn't this affect the respective development of the two languages? Don't worry, don't worry. In fact, the vocabulary development of bilingual babies is "to improve first".
Although the early vocabulary is characterized by the same amount, with the growth of the baby's age and the enhancement of language understanding and application ability, the bilingual baby's monolingual vocabulary will be the same as that of the monolingual baby, and it also has the advantage of another language vocabulary, that is to say, the bilingual baby's vocabulary will double!
Aside from these research data, simply speaking bilingual learning will not really have a negative impact on children's language development. On the contrary, bilingual babies have more room for development and more possibilities than monolingual babies in their later vocabulary and range.
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Misleading statement II. "There are many languages at home, and children will be confused because of language confusion, which will affect brain development."
The development track of children's brain is that a large number of neural pathways have been established in various life experiences in the early stage. These neural pathways are not always preserved, but will be repeatedly trimmed and optimized through later experiences.
Bilingual or multilingual babies will associate and understand different expressions of the same word through specific contexts. It is this transformation process that will produce and strengthen neural pathways that are not found in monolingual babies' brains.
The research shows (Bialystok, 20 12) that bilingual infants have better "executive function" than monolingual infants. Executive function refers to the ability of planning, paying attention, solving problems and working memory, and is the main function of the prefrontal lobe of the brain. Babies with stronger executive function have more flexible cognitive ability and stronger adaptability.
Simply put: Bilingual environment is beneficial to the development of baby's brain, and even can delay the occurrence of Alzheimer's disease!
Well, you are right. Indeed, many studies show that (Allardi. , etc. , 20 13; Peirani & ampAbutalebi, 20 15), bilingualism can delay the occurrence of Alzheimer's disease, so as adults, we can also consider learning one more language.
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Misleading statement 3. "Multilingual environment allows the baby to live in a multilingual cultural environment. Because the baby can't adapt to this complicated language environment, he is at a loss and suffers from autism. "
Seeing this sentence, I remembered a sentence: "I can't spit it out." Before inviting people who are not professionals in the field of autism to talk about autism, you must first understand what autism is.
Autism, commonly known as autism, is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) published on 20 13. Its core symptoms and manifestations are: continuous and multi-occasion social communication and interaction defects, verbal and non-verbal communication difficulties, rigid behavior and interest.