Language immersion

80% of children born in the world grow up learning 2 to 3 languages simultaneously with their mother tongue. The period between birth and three years of age is conducive to language learning because of the brain plasticity, or adaptability, of the little ones. In addition, at a young age, children can more easily distinguish the sounds of different languages in their environment. This makes it easier for them to speak a language. Bilingualism also has beneficial effects on the cognitive development of the child and helps to enrich the neural network and develop the executive functions of the brain. 

In our nurseries each group of children is supervised by two professionals of two different languages: French and English. The professionals are native speakers of their language of reference and speak to the children only in that language throughout the day.

The children are therefore daily exposed to both languages, which allows them to absorb the languages at their own pace. The bilingual environment is not intended to teach children at such a young age, nor to seek performance in one language or the other, but rather to provide children with a culturally rich environment, with clear reference points, while allowing the child to choose whether to speak to one professional or another, in one language or another.

MYTHS OF BILINGUALISM

However, some people fear that learning more than one language will cause their child to have a language disorder. Yet 80% of children born in the world grow up learning 2 to 3 languages simultaneously with their mother tongue.

Recent studies show that learning two or more languages does not cause language impairment, nor does it aggravate language difficulties in children who have them.

It is quite common for a child who speaks two or more languages not to have the same strengths in each language. For example, they may produce better constructed sentences in one language and use a more precise and richer vocabulary in the other. Similarly, he or she may know the vocabulary of emotions in the language used at home and the vocabulary of animals in the language used in the nursery.

The important thing is to consider all the sentences and words produced in both languages. This is how one can assess whether a bilingual child's language development is normal, not by assessing language skills in one language.

Furthermore, the language best mastered at any given time may vary and change over time and depend on the context in which the child uses it and on the people to whom it is addressed. Thus, they may use and master one language better than another during a certain period of their life (e.g. home language at age 3) and become better at the second language during another period (e.g. 2nd year of primary school)

Finally, children may mix the two languages in a sentence when they do not know the word in the other language. This is a normal phenomenon and should not cause concern.