Learning a language- the sooner the better!

Small children learn languages more easily and more quickly than adults do. Starting to learn aforeign language when you are over the age of 18 is infinitely more difficult than if you start as a young child or better yet, a baby. Why is this?

Babies start to pick up on sounds of a language while in the womb. They listen to the “song” of the language(s) being spoken around them, the rhythm, stress, andintonation of speech, which linguists call prosody. If you hum a sentence in English the sound of that is the prosody. If someone then hums a sentence in Spanish, Russian or Chinese the prosody of each language will sound different. Of course, babies that are exposed to more than one language while in utero, and thus more than one prosody, have a head start on being bilingual or even trilingual later in life.

A child´s first word is, for parents, one of the most exciting moments in their child´s evolution. After that first word come many new words and by a year and a half most children start to “arrange words” or put them in small sentences. By 2 years old, most children know between 20 and 200 words and that number soars to almost 1,000 words by the age of three. The process seems effortless, and for children, it is. But how exactly does it happen?

One of today´s experts on children´s ability to learn languages is linguist Dr. Charles Yang, author of the book “The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World”. Dr. Yang´s book comes after years ofresearch in linguistics and an especially close-to-home study of his own young son and the way in which he learns to speak the English language. Yang demonstrates that children learn languages naturally.

Yang believes that the linguist Noam Chomsky revolutionized linguistics as he was the first to give children the credit they deserve in language learning. Yang writes, “The only way for children to learn something as complex as language, Chomsky contends, is to have known a lot about how language works beforehand, so that a child knows what to expect when immersed in the sea of speech. In other words, the ability to learn a language is innate, hidden somewhere in our genes.”

Whereas adults use their heads to learn a language, children use their bodies and respond to new languages with curiosity and impartiality. While adults have to memorize different grammar rules to understand a language, children learn grammar naturally by listening to those around them.
Chomsky wrote:
“A child who learns a language has in some sense constructed the grammar for himself on the basis of observation of sentences and non-sentences (i.e. corrections by the verbal community)”

He also believed that most children exposed to spoken language around them, independent of the language, culture or intelligence level learn at a similar and very rapid pace, “…the young child has succeeded in carrying out…a remarkable type of theory construction. Furthermore, this task is accomplished in anastonishingly short time, to a large extent independently of intelligence, and in a comparable way by all children.”

Parents are encouraged to speak a lot to their toddlers, read to them frequently and expose them to a wide variety of vocabulary in order to prepare them for the big wave of speech starting between 2 and 3 years of age. And for those who expose their children to more than one language, even better. Immersing your children in another language and culture is beneficial to their social and cognitive development. Many experts believe that children exposed to two or more languages from a very early age have what is called “mental dexterity”defined as intelligence as revealed by quickness and alertness of mind. And not only will bilingual children be more alert in the mind, but also more culturallyopen-minded as an adult.

( Taken from http://www.curso-ingles.com/blog/aprender-un-idioma-cuanto-antes-mejor/#more-306)

LEMON TREE ANIMATION with LYRICS!

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Presidential Election in Chile.

The first round of presidential election in Chile is set to begin with nine candidates competing to succeed President Sebastian Pinera. There are 2,012 polling stations in 365 municipalities across the country and the preliminary results will be announced after 19:30 local time. According to latest opinion polls, former president Michelle Bachelet is the front runner in the vote with conservative Evelyn Matthei being a distant second going into the election. A recent poll by the Chilean polling organization CEP revealed that Bachelet was backed by 47 percent compared with the 14 percent for Matthei. Matthei, however, has received backing from Pinera, who is not standing for re-election as he is barred by the country’s constitution from running for a second consecutive term. Pinera called for high voter participation in the elections, saying, "I ask people to go vote, to motivate and encourage family members, coworkers and neighbors to do the same”. He will hand over power on March 11 next year. The election rules require the winning candidate to obtain absolute majority of votes. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the votes, the two top two finishers will compete in a December runoff.

Halloween

Every year on October 31st children (and some adults) dress up in costumes to celebrate Halloween. Houses are decorated with Jack-o-Lanterns, artificial spiders and cobwebs, pretend witches and ghosts and other frightening objects that symbolize this special day. On the evening of Halloween, in North America and many other countries around the world, groups of children can be seen walking the streets wearing costumes and visiting their neighbors´ houses to receive candy. Halloween ObjectTypical festive Halloween activities include Trick-or-Treating (going house to house to receive sweets or food), attending costume parties, decorating, carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted houses, telling scary stories, and watching horror films. But where does this holiday come from? Halloween originally comes from the Celts that lived in Europe over 2000 years ago. The Celtic festival of Samhain, which comes from the Old Irish for “summer’s end” marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the ‘darker half’ of the year. It was seen as a time when the spirits could more easily come into our world. The souls of the dead throughout history were both honored and warded-off. The custom of wearing costumes and masks at Halloween goes back to Celtic traditions of attempting to copy the evil spirits or placate them. Bonfires, which were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers, were used in rituals and to scare off witches. Throughout history Halloween has been an important tradition in Scotland and Ireland. In these countries, children and poor people would sing and say prayers for the dead in return for cakes which is where “trick or treating” began. The Celts would carry lanterns made with turnips. During the 19th Century when the Irish and Scottish immigrated massively to North America they brought the Halloween tradition with them. On US soil, the turnip lanterns changed to pumpkin lanterns which are called Jack-o-Lanterns. Trick or Treating was confined to the immigrant communities of North American during the 1800´s, but slowly it was gradually assimilated into mainstream society and by the early 1900´s it was being celebrated coast to coast by people of all social, racial and religious backgrounds. Today, many countries still remember the dead on November 1st which is called All Saints Day. Another name for it is “All Hallow’s Day”. The day before, October 31st, is called “All Hallow’s Eve”, or Halloween for short.

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