Languages boost the brain
Why would anyone bother learning another language when English is often the sole communication language in today’s world? One simple answer is that learning a second language offers great benefits to the brain development of little children.
There is now a happy consensus amongst early childhood experts that there are not only lifelong benefits in knowing more than one language, but there are also transitional cognitive benefits during the learning process. Children who do well in more than one language are better at Maths, logical reasoning and ironically, English tests. And of course, they also do better at exams generally.
Early exposure to a second language allows neural connections to form and grow in the child’s brain. Creativity and lateral thinking are fostered by exposure to a second language that reasons and communicates by taking the thought processes via a different pathway.
Why Mandarin, and not French or some other European language?
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Mandarin vocabulary, grammar and sentence construction differ greatly from English. When you learn two languages as different as Mandarin and English, your brain (or your child’s brain) is thus challenged to a greater extent than if you were to learn two related European languages.
Next, what role does music play in your little ones’ brain development?
Research shows that early exposure to music has lifelong benefits. There is a strong proven correlation between musical training in childhood and cognitive abilities in adulthood.
Researchers at Northwestern University recorded the auditory brainstem responses of college students — that is to say, their electrical brain waves — in response to complex sounds. The group of students who reported musical training in childhood had more robust responses. Their brains were better able to pick out essential elements, like pitch, in the complex sounds when they were tested.
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According to Northwestern University researcher, Professor Nina Kraus, “Childhood music instruction has strong linguistic benefits and improves performance on everyday listening tasks. Since we live in an inherently noisy world, the better we are at focusing on sound and perceiving different sounds, the better.”
She went on to say, “Based on what we already know about the ways that music helps shape the brain, the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning.”
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