Five Myths of Language Learning for Kids

Debunking misconceptions about kids learning multiple languages.

Even though I speak several languages today, I didn’t grow up in a multilingual household. My family spoke Cantonese exclusively at home, and then I went on to learn Mandarin Chinese and English at school. So, the very first step of my journey is to learn about the best practices of language learning for kids. But as I began to dive into this topic, I realized that there are many misconceptions, and these misconceptions can lead to anxiety and doubt, and can even deter us from fully committing to creating a multilingual learning experience. 

In their book The Bilingual Edge, scholars Kendall King and Alison Mackey examined several key myths of language learning. Some are more straight-forward (like “it’s never too late to learn a language”), but there are a few that changed my view on what I should or should not do when it comes to creating an environment to support my goal of raising Kai multilingual.

Here are five of key language learning myths –

Myth 1: Learning multiple languages causes language delays.

This is perhaps the most common myth. People have asked me if Kai has spoken his first words yet (he’s 14-months-old). When I said no, some of them looked at me with sympathy and said “oh it’s probably because he’s learning multiple languages at once.” But the truth is that there hasn’t been empirical evidence or sufficient data to support this stereotype. In fact, studies have shown that bilinguals and monolinguals make developmental progress on similar timetables when it comes to language. Confirmation bias leads people to attribute “late talking” to exposing kids to multiple languages, but that’s simply not true. So stop guilting parents if their kids speak a little later — multilingual exposure is not a cause for language delay! 

Myth 2: A young child should be exposed to two languages at most.

When I first started to envision our household’s language composition, I was a bit hesitant about starting out with more than two languages. My native language is Cantonese, but I use Mandarin Chinese frequently for work (it’s also more “practical” for Kai to learn). I also love speaking French and would like Kai to share my love for the language. Plus, at some point, Kai will need to go to Hebrew school. Despite my love for all these languages, I wasn’t sure if I should expose Kai to just two languages at first, and then add a third or fourth language later. While there is not a lot of data to show the difference between bilingual and trilingual kids, we do know that in many countries like Singapore and Switzerland, kids are used to multiple languages from a young age. While multilingual households need to fine tune their strategy (more on this topic later), it’s important to keep in mind that there’s no empirical reason for limiting the number of languages in your household.

Myth 3: Kids should only learn from native speakers. 

Even though I’m a native or near-native speaker of my target languages (Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese), Brian is not. I didn’t think he can be helpful in teaching Kai the languages until the scholars debunked this myth. A parent doesn’t have to a native speaker or have a perfect accent to teach a target language. Brian can still help out by interacting with Kai in our target languages — even if it’s just speaking basic phrases. This really takes off some burden in a household like ours when we’re trying to boost the use of our target languages in any way we can. In fact, ever since we committed to raising Kai multilingual, Brian has learned more Chinese words than he ever did before because he's gotten more practice! So, everyone wins.

Myth 4: Mixing languages is a sign of confusion.

In our household, we constantly have Cantonese, Mandarin and English at any given moment. I often find myself going back and forth between these languages — I say a sentence and inadvertently mix phrases in multiple languages. Sometimes Kai looked at me with his furrowed eyebrows (maybe it’s just his Resting Baby Face). But he started to understand that different sounds in different languages have different meanings. For example, we would tell him to kiss someone in Cantonese “锡锡”, he gets it right away. And then we’d immediately switch it to Mandarin Chinese and ask him to clap “鼓掌”. He seems to be perfectly ok with mixing different languages. Studies have found that young children hear way more sounds than we do, so they’re able to naturally distinguish different language systems. They will inevitably go through a phase of language mixing, but all children move beyond this phase.

Myth 5: Talking toys and TV/videos are great ways to pick up some language skills.

When I first started looking into tools to help aid language learning, I thought talking toys or iPad lessons would be a way to help. I even got Kai a fake phone toy that speaks Chinese! Young kids only learn languages through meaningful interactions with actual human beings. Extensive studies have shown that passive exposure to a language does not advance a child’s language skills. Even though I wish I could take shortcuts and let Kai sit in front of an iPad with Chinese programs all day, there’s no substitute to active interactions in the target languages. When the kids get a little older (school age), some tools like TV shows in target languages can help, but NOT when they’re babies or toddlers.