Research sheds new light on the different ways children learn language

Researchers investigating how children learn new languages have discovered that lots of exposure may not always be the best approach.

Immersion through stories, songs and conversation is often presented as the natural way for children to learn, much as they acquired their first language.

But this can underestimate how much mental work learning from exposure requires, research from Lancaster University suggests.

Instead, experts show how explaining the rules of language is also a vital part of learning.

Across three studies involving 220 children aged eight to 13, researchers found that children are not exclusively best served through immersion to learn language.

Children as young as eight could understand information about grammar, although their ability to turn that information into a learning advantage changed with age and cognitive development.

The research was led by Dr Wensi Zhang, alongside Professor Patrick Rebuschat and Professor Padraic Monaghan. The team taught children a miniature “alien language” through a computer game at their schools. Children listened to unfamiliar sentences while watching animated scenes and had to discover what the words meant and the grammar of words in the sentences.

Dr Zhang, who completed her PhD at Lancaster and is now at Hebei Normal University in China, said: “Children are often seen as having an almost magical capacity to absorb language, but learning through immersion is not effortless.

“They have to remember unfamiliar sounds, consider several possible meanings and identify patterns across many situations."

In the first study, eight and nine-year-olds discovered some of the grammar without explanation or feedback. But, as a group, they showed little evidence of learning the meaning of individual words.

This does not mean that immersion failed.

It did, however, show that some learners struggled in the face of a dizzyingly complicated puzzle involving linking new words, new grammar, and new ambiguous scenes all at once.

Dr Zhang added: “When a child is struggling, the answer may not always be to present the same material ten more times and hope that their ‘magical language brain’ will automatically reveal the pattern. Some children may benefit from clearer input or a carefully targeted explicit explanation.”

A second study tested this possibility. Before exposure, some children received a short instruction about a rule of the language grammar. Children as young as eight could later articulate the rule. Successful verb learning was associated with whether they became aware of the grammar, not simply whether they had received the instruction.

However, understanding a rule did not mean that every child could use it equally well. The benefits of instruction varied by age: 12 and 13-year-olds showed the clearest gains, particularly in learning the grammar. Children therefore appeared increasingly able to combine a taught rule with patterns encountered through exposure.

Chronological age was not the only factor involved. “Changes in memory abilities across childhood may have received much less attention from teachers and researchers”, Dr Zhang said. “Yet they may help explain why children of the same age respond differently to the same input or explanation.”

The third study distinguished effects of age and memory in shaping how children learned under explicit instruction. The results showed that memory did not contribute in the same way at every age: children of different ages appeared to draw on different cognitive resources to understand and use the information they had been taught.

For parents, teachers and curriculum designers, this complicates the search for a single “best age” to begin language learning. Chronological age is accompanied by developing memory, attention and awareness of how language works.

These abilities may influence whether a child can hold an explanation in mind and combine it with what they hear and see.

The researchers therefore argue for a more dynamic view: not only that “one size does not fit all”, but that one size may not even fit the same learner over time.

Dr Zhang said: “Immersion and explicit instruction should not be treated as opposites. Good teaching means recognising when children need space to discover a pattern implicitly, as well as when they need explicit instruction to notice and use it.”

Padraic Monaghan, Professor of Cognition in the department of Psychology, said: “The results of these studies show how language learning changes as children get older.

"Clearly lots of exposure to a new language is great for learning, but as children reach adolescence, they are more and more able to apply knowledge about language to fast-track their learning.”

Patrick Rebuschat, Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, added: “Dr Zhang’s studies are an elegant answer to a question every language teacher faces: when does explaining grammar actually help?

"Millions of children around the world learn a new language at school, often with just a few hours a week, so knowing what works, and at what age, can make that time count.”

The research is part of the work of the Lancaster Language Learning Lab, co-directed by Professor Rebuschat and Professor Monaghan, and was supported by the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD) and the Camões Institute Chair for Multilingualism and Diversity at Lancaster University.

Children’s simultaneous or successive acquisition of vocabulary and grammar: Evidence from cross-situational learning is published in the Journal of Child Language.

The Role of Age and Instruction in Children's Learning of Vocabulary and Grammar is published in Language Learning.

And Individual differences in children's response to explicit instruction: effects of age and memory ability is published in Applied Linguistics.