Never too young to start learning a language
I support the views of Vincent Siu ('Traditional methods of learning a language must be updated', August 6). Language is a tool - you use it or you lose it.
Language is an issue for educators as well as parents, and the learning process should be more fun. One academic has suggested that language in its natural state is learned in situ, never in a classroom. Babies pick up languages effortlessly through play.
Noam Chomsky, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said he was baffled by how babies knew where a word began and when it ended in a sentence.
He believed that the highly complex language ability could only be in-born.
Another MIT professor, Steve Pinker, said he was amazed by the fact that a three-year-old child was already able to speak a sentence that conforms to all the grammar rules, a task which takes adults years to learn, without complete success. He suggested that there must be a grammar gene.
An academic from Washington University says that babies learn through interactive play with people, not through audio visual aids or DVDs.
