Learning a foreign language: the earlier the better?

Quodlibet (Columbia)

Yes, that's been common knowledge for thousands of years. Small children learn any language naturally and effortlessly, in a few weeks, just by listening to their playmates, and it's so amazing that psychologists still don't understand how it works. I was placed in a bilingual school when I was four and a half years old and I don't remember how I ever learned my second language, which I don't recall ever not knowing, as is the case for my mother tongue. I do remember that we sang a lot: nursery rhymes, the alphabet song, popular songs and the foreign national anthem. If you're a small child you simply sit back and listen, I guess. If your parents wait until you're already about eight or ten --I don't know exactly when-- then it's too late already and you'll never get the pronunciation perfectly right, at least in most cases, I think.

A foreign teacher interacts with her students at an English training center in Hangzhou on July 8, 2014.[Photo/IC]