With the popular knowledge that is easier for children to learn a second language because of the critical period (a hypothesis that maintains that between the first 6 – 12 months of life, kids have their best language acquisition) is common to see parents trying to find how to take advantages of that period. But across the most frequently questions, appears the one on the top of the list: When is appropriate to start the process of learning a foreign language?
According to the study called: Age effects in L2 grammar processing as revealed by ERP’s and how (not) to study them, our capacity to learn a language dismisses gradually over our lives. Although there is not an exactly age to start learning a second language, there are two recommendations that get common in order to have an answer: the sooner the better, and around 6 years old, when children start relating their environment.
In both cases, there is a mayor point in the process of learning a second language: the importance of a good pronunciation. The voicing children listen while they start assimilating new sounds will become into the accent they use for the rest of their life. That’s why the pronunciation is so important, because it determinates the way students will talk in the future.
The best way to avoid accents is to learn the language with native speakers, who won’t have an “English accent” while teaching kids new vocabularies. Applying this solution will assure no just a better pronunciation, but an excellent skill to understand the language with other accents.