How did we learn to speak our native language?

by Dana Skopal

As parents we are all concerned about how well our child is learning its mother tongue. Do you remember when your mother or father taught you the past tense? When did you learn the rules to construct sentences by putting words together in a certain order? We don't remember these moments of our childhood because they never occurred!

Our parents didn't teach us how to walk and they didn't teach us how to talk. Children begin by imitating what they hear their parents say and repeat random sounds and phrases. As the child's speech improves, parents respond more positively with longer phrases and sentences and so the communication channel opens up. In effect, children are like copycats and love to copy the sounds that they hear. A more technical description is 'subconscious language acquisition'.

Children therefore learn by hearing the words and by trying to repeat the sound many times. Repetition and hearing the sound over and over again is how the child absorbs the language. The encouragement by parents at home enhances the process. Talking with and reading to your children are the best ways to teach language skills, which really are life skills. Even if children do not understand complete or complex sentences or if they do not know how to read, children love hearing stories and looking at books.

By listening to people talk and by listening to stories children absorb a massive number of words and phrases. They then abstract rules from the different sentences that they hear and create their own grammar rules as they are learning to group words together. Children from the age of two to about seven years of age constantly adjust their grammar until it is the same as that of the adult speakers around them.

For children learning a second language the same principles can be applied. If a five-year-old child hears a second language a few times, the child will automatically repeat those sounds and learn the words. Between the ages of two and seven the child is like a sponge, taking in what ever language they hear around them. Children also do not worry about what the grammar rules are! Therefore so long as a child hears a language - any language - when they are at this wonderful period of ages of two to seven years they will learn it perfectly.

After about the age of seven it becomes increasingly more difficult for humans to learn languages. It appears that the thought process changes, as does the way of learning. Kindergartens and primary schools are therefore the best places to teach the correct structure of the child's mother tongue as well as a second language. Parents can build on this at home by reading books to the child, letting them watch children's videos in other languages and by letting children play appropriate educational computer games. As a parent you are the main communicator and language teacher for your child in those first seven years of their life.

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