• 4 Myths About Bilingual Children
How Children Learn More Than One Language
Children become bilingual in two ways: through Simultaneous Learning and Sequential Learning.
Simultaneous learning occurs when a child grows up in a bilingual environment from birth or when a second language is introduced before the age of 3.
Children who learn two languages simultaneously reach the same developmental language milestones as children who learn only one language.
Although bilingual children may take a little longer to say their first words, they usually start speaking within the typical age range. At first, a bilingual child may mix the two languages, but over time, they develop the ability to separate them.
Sequential learning happens when a child learns a second language after having already established their first language, typically after the age of 3.
This often occurs in cases of migration or when a child starts school in a different language from the one spoken at home. In this situation, we can expect the child to go through the following stages:
Myths About Bilingualism
It is important to understand when a child’s language mistakes are due to a language disorder and when they are simply a natural part of bilingual development. That’s why we need to clarify some common myths about bilingualism:
Myth 1: "Bilingualism leads to language confusion."
It is completely normal for a child learning two languages simultaneously to use words or sentences from both languages in the same conversation. When they don’t know a word in one language, they may use the equivalent word in the other language to communicate.
What matters is that they follow grammatical rules. Research has shown that children who mix languages still respect the syntactic rules of each language.
Myth 2: "Parents must follow the 'one parent – one language' rule."
Many parents, wanting to help their child, decide that each parent should speak only one specific language to the child. While this approach is an option when raising a bilingual child, there is no evidence that it is necessary or significantly more beneficial.
Parents can use whichever language they feel comfortable with when speaking to their child—even mixing both languages—since language mixing is a natural stage of bilingual development.
Myth 3: "Young children learn languages like sponges."
Not exactly. Children learning a second language need about 3-4 years of exposure to develop conversational skills and 7-8 years to reach academic proficiency. As we can see, learning a language is a long-term process.
Myth 4: “Learning a second language makes language difficulties worse.”
This is not true. Research has shown that learning a second language does not worsen a child’s language disorder. Studies comparing bilingual and monolingual children with language disorders have found that the only difference is that bilingual children simply speak an additional language.
