Immersion Foreign Language

The Acquisition of a Foreign Language Through using Total Immersion methodology for Children Under Six Years Old

During the first six months of a child’s life, they make around seventy different sounds (De Villiers, 2001). These sounds make up the phonetics of all the six thousand languages worldwide. They use these sounds when starting to talk and form words. The brain then discards the noises not used in the language they absorb from their environment, parents or carers. Parents play a huge part in forming a child’s language. Even if we are “preprogrammed” in some way to communicate verbally, we need to learn a specific language from the people around us. Mothers typically adjust their speech to fit the child’s level. These are called

The benefits of acquiring cultural skills are that the child learns to understand the rules when it comes to communicating within that culture, for example, appropriate use of eye contact (frowned upon in some parts of the world such as Asia) and the use of manners/politeness. Allowing a child to observe things like mouth and facial expressions provides opportunities for them to mimic and clearly comprehend how sounds and phonology apply in that language. They begin to shape their mouths to change sounds between three and six months (De Villiers, 2001). Providing an atmosphere in which a child can participate in general day-to-day activities and interactions will greatly aid them in acquiring a second language. When a foreign language is part of a child’s immediate environment, language acquisition is a subconscious occurrence because children under the age of six have all the necessary tools to speak any language. An example of this are migrant families, which are often bilingual, in which a child can speak a mother tongue and the language of the country they live in. A child will develop any language they need to use. Krashen (2003) suggests that there is no fundamental difference between the way we acquire our first language

Information collected in situations that are similar to those in which it is acquired. This is because when we learn something our memories also record something about the context and the way in which it was learnt. There are two ways of developing language ability: the first by acquisition alternatively by learning. Acquisition is a sub-conscious process, for example a child learning its own language or an adult 'picking up' a second language simply by living and working in a foreign country. Learning is the conscious process of developing a foreign language focusing on grammatical structure and features of the language through language lessons. According to Krashen (2009), a taught language cannot be turned into acquisition. It is pointless spending a lot of time learning grammar rules, since this will not help us become better users of the language in authentic situations. At most, the knowledge we gain about the language will help us in direct tests of that knowledge or in situations when we have time to self-correct, as in the editing of a piece of writing (Krashen, 2009). Cognitive development starts from the social context a child is immersed in, then becomes internalised. Research shows that cognitive development is more likely to occur through problem solving than deliberate