What I'll Remember

I think something that will stick with me from psych 1001 five years from now will be the incredible language potential infants have. We learned in chapter ten that infants show universal adaptability, or the capability to detect all speech sounds, including those from languages other than the one they are "born into." We learned from the textbook and in lecture that infants exposed to Mandarin between the ages of six and nine months of age showed lesser decline in ability to detect speech sounds of that language, and children exposed to a foreign language at a young age showed higher ability to learn that language later in life.

I just find this all fascinating. Especially today, where being bilingual - or at least having had exposure to a second language - in America is not only useful but almost necessary, exposing children to second languages at a young age is essential. My younger brother and sister are three and five years old, and my brother will be learning French in his preschool next semester, and my sister is in Spanish emersion kindergarten - her teacher speaks primarily Spanish to the class. This is extraordinary. By the time my sister is in college, she could be fluent in Spanish. Who knows what children could be capable in terms of language by the time I have children?