Supporting Research

“Incidental learning [indirectly learning through background noise or environment] is a robust phenomenon that may play a role in natural language acquisition”

What Parents Want to Know About Foreign Language Immersion Schools

 

“In addition to reaping the social and economic advantages of bilingualism, immersion learners benefit cognitively, exhibiting greater nonverbal problem-solving abilities and more flexible thinking”

 Infant Learning Laboratory University of Wisconsin-Madison

 

“There’s a well-established positive relationship between basic thinking skills and being a fully proficient bilingual who maintains regular use of both languages. Fully proficient bilinguals outperform monolinguals in the areas of divergent thinking, pattern recognition, and problem solving”

Maturational Constraints on Language Learning

 

“Language learners who begin acquiring language at an early maturational state end up performing significantly better in that language than those who begin at a later maturational state”

 Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language

 

“In most behavioral domains, competence is expected to increase over development, whether gradually or in stages. However, in some domains [such as language acquisition], it has been suggested that competence does not monotonically increase with development, but rather reaches its peak during a “critical period”

Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants

 

“Numerous studies over the past decade support the claim that infants are equipped with powerful statistical language learning mechanisms.”

The Long-Term Impact of Symbolic Gesturing During Infancy”

“Signing babies engage in more joint attention episodes than their non-signing peers. Joint attention happens when a baby directs an adult’s attention to something he or she is interested in. A child who is more skilled in initiating joint attention episodes can help accelerate his or her verbal language development. The findings in this study helps to explain why signing babies tend to start to talk earlier their non-signing peers.”

Incidental language learning: Listening (and learning) out of the corner of your ear

 

“In addition to reaping the social and economic advantages of bilingualism, immersion learners benefit cognitively, exhibiting greater nonverbal problem-solving abilities and more flexible thinking”

 Infant Learning Laboratory University of Wisconsin-Madison

 

Other Resources

http://www.cal.org/earlylang/benefits/benefits_of_being_bilingual.html

http://www.carla.umn.edu/immersion/FAQs.html

http://www.ksbe.edu/spi/pdfs/bilingual%20immersion%20full.pdf