As soon As Possible

 Years ago I read a paper by Patricia Kuhl about language development in children and according to that research language development starts during pregnancy around the time the hearing organs develop..

This research by Patricia Kuhl found that from 0~12 months babies have the wonderful ability to pick up language. In reality babies do not know where they will be born in the world right!?

Because of that babies are adept at picking up numerous accents and sounds.

 What she noticed was that this ability starts dropping off from the 10 month mark, making it hard to learn new accents and sounds by around the 3 years mark. Which means that the ability to hear new languages phonetics after the age of three is difficult. I know this myself from studying Japanese, there are some sounds I just can’t get. Intellectually I know them, can pronounce them but hearing them is hard. Then the ability to learn new languages easily, starts dropping off from around seven years old and hitting a low when the kids are teenagers.

I've seen this over the years, when I teach the English “R” and “L” sounds side by side, and the young children who have been exposed to English can choose the right card. Whereas their parents cannot make the distinction at all.

For a more in depth explaination please watch the talk below.