Bilingualism In Preschool Essay

Bilingualism in Preschool Teaching a child, a second language can be beneficial to their future, and it is best to start as early as possible. The younger a child is, the easier it is for them to learn new languages. Despite some beliefs, raising a child bilingually does not delay speech and language abilities, instead, has been seen to help their developing language skills. A bilingual child is given many benefits in life and school by being able to speak more than one language. It is best to teach a child a second language when they are in preschool. It is best to teach a child a language while they are still young. Preschool age is a vital point in their life for learning new languages, since “the younger the learner, the better they are at mimicking new sounds and adopting pronunciation. The brain is open to new sounds and patterns in preadolescence” (Ford). By

“Code mixing is a natural part of bilingualism” (Lowry). Code mixing is using two languages within the same sentence. While it may seem like a sign of confusion, even adults who have bee fluent their entire lives code mix, and it should be expected when a child is speaking to another bilingual. It has been “found that bilingual children performed significantly better than monolingual speakers on a metalinguistic task” (Carlson, Meltzoff). This shows that bilingual children do not get the two languages confused, but know how to easily distinguish the two. A bilingual child will usually code mix if they do not know a certain word in one language, however, as they learn more vocabulary of each language, “bilingual children become increasingly more adept at controlling the two languages” (Lomba). Parents should not worry about the myths of delayed speech or confusion surrounding