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Early Childhood Bilingualism Essay

1780 Words8 Pages

Having exposed what entails to acquire languages, it is essential to bring up that the focus of this conceptual framework is not to just to determine and analyze what entails an early successive (sequential) bilingualism process, but also how this process contributes to better skills' development. Following early childhood bilingual continuum, children who get to acquire an additional language are more competent that those who do not have the opportunity to do it.

To begin with, a great expositor of early childhood bilingualism, Titone (1972), declares that the best age for children to acquire a second language is when they are around four to five years old. He highlights that despite of the fact that their parents do not speak the target language, they could well acquire it in preschool. This is due to the fact that kids at this stage are eager to communicate with everyone in order to socialize, they are curious, …show more content…

She alleges that this is not true. Instead, all children have a natural ability to develop any type of language, and this is how they manage to instinctively communicate with their closest relatives. The author also suggests that if a child has the opportunity to acquire a second language during early childhood, should be encouraged to maintain it as to take advantage of the cognitive, cultural, economic, linguistic, literacy, social and school readiness benefits of bilingualism. Along with Krashen (1981), she reinstates the importance of teachers throughout the process of second language acquisition. Early childhood professionals should strive to understand what entails to expose children to an additional linguistic system. As well as, determining what are the best ways to accomplish it in order to better design and follow its high quality early bilingual methodology

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