Late bilingualism – refers to bilingualism when the second language is learned after the age of 6 or 7; especially when it is learned in adolescence or adulthood. Late bilingualism is a consecutive bilingualism which occurs after the acquisition of the first language (after the childhood language development period).
Hofmann 1997: 34) The term late bilingualism refers to people who have learned their second language during adulthood or in other words after the age of puberty.
Begin using your languages with your child as early as possible; the more input the better. Most multilingual children use their first words by the time they are 1 year old. By age 2, most multilingual children use two-word phrases. Phrases like “my ball” or “more juice” can be expressed in one or more languages.
In terms of speech and language development, monolingual and bilingual children are expected to go through stages of cooing (one to six months old), babbling (four to ten months old), and jargon (9-12 months old) before ultimately speaking their first words around their first birthday.
Children of any age can become fluent in a language. It is easier to start with a language when kids are younger, but there are many ways to make this transition easier. Researchers are also not agreed on an “age limit” for learning to speak a language without an accent.
Many studies have reported that children can be bilingual right from birth. The much rumoured “window of opportunity” is between infancy and the age five. This is because the brain grows and expands rapidly till the child reaches five years of age. So the more their brain is stretched, the more it develops.
Learning 3, or even 4 languages at childhood is absolutely possible, but it totally depends on the time you're willing to put in…. and your child's willingness to learn.
Children learning two languages simultaneously go through the same developmental stages as children learning one language. While bilingual children may start talking slightly later than monolingual children, they still begin talking within the normal range (11).
The idea that two languages causes language delays in children has been a long-standing myth in the United States. However, research has dispelled this myth. Children are able to learn two languages at the same pace as other children who are learning only one language.
The most recent major study on language learning and age was conducted by researchers at Harvard and MIT. It concluded that starting to learn a new language before age 10 will give a learner the best chance of achieving proficiency similar to that of a native speaker. Why before 10 years old?
Knowing how to speak a second language has many advantages, and many studies suggests that bilingual kids are smarter than others. In fact, there are some which even note the differences in how the brain develops with bilingual and monolingual kids.
However, in reality, experts recommend that a child should spend approximately 20% to 30% of their waking hours on attaining conversation fluency in any language. As such, the maximum number of languages your child should be learning at a time is three.
One of the most important benefits of early bilingualism is often taken for granted: bilingual children will know multiple languages, which is important for travel, employment, speaking with members of one's extended family, maintaining a connection to family culture and history, and making friends from different ...
Students learning a second language move through five predictable stages: Preproduction, Early Production, Speech Emergence, Intermediate Fluency, and Advanced Fluency (Krashen & Terrell, 1983).
Firstly, bilinguals who learn to use two languages before school age are classified as early bilinguals. Whereas, late bilinguals are individuals who learn a second language after childhood or during adulthood.
Late bilinguals receive the same cognitive benefits as early bilinguals; these benefits are in higher levels of executive functions, specifically in inhibitory control and attentional switching.
Speech/Language Milestones
Boys tend to develop language skills a little later than girls, but in general, kids may be labeled "late-talking children" if they speak less than 10 words by the age of 18 to 20 months, or fewer than 50 words by 21 to 30 months of age.
Professionals tend to diagnose late talkers by assessing vocabulary size and word combinations. Children who produce fewer than 50 words and do not produce simple two-word phrases by 24 months of age are considered late talkers.
In fact, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), about 15 percent of children between the ages of 18 and 24 months old are late talkers. There are several reasons why a 2-year-old is babbling but not talking. Sometimes, it may be because they are shy or introverted.
So if your toddler is 2 or 3 years old and isn't yet talking, it's vital to go ahead and speak with their pediatrician, or with a speech-language pathologist. They will likely recommend a speech evaluation in order to assess your child's current abilities. Early intervention is so important in these situations.
If your child is over two years old, you should have your pediatrician evaluate them and refer them for speech therapy and a hearing exam if they can only imitate speech or actions but don't produce words or phrases by themselves, they say only certain words and only those words repeatedly, they cannot follow simple ...
More than three languages is possible, but it is a good idea to make sure that there's at least one language that children hear a bit more of so that they will definitely learn to express themselves in one of their three languages and so that they can use it to learn other things, so to help the general development.
If a child does not have enough exposure to the target language, they cannot become fluent. Therefore by adding too many languages at once, you risk not having enough exposure to each of them. This could mean your child can speak 3, 4, 5 or even 6 languages, but is not actually fluent in one of them.
Keep in mind that multilingual children seem to develop speech with a bit of delay if you compare them with monolingual children, but a bit of delay is worth if he'll be fluent from birth in 3 languages!