At what age can children learn a non native language through television/podcasts?
Child is currently 2 years 2 months old.
I speak only in English with the child and the child understands it.
I read the story books in English and the child understands them.
English is not the native language and I am the only source of English for the child.
Considering: meta.ell.stackexchange.com
Be careful?children don't generally learn language from television, and allowing more than a couple hours a day of television has been shown to slow language development. Children under 2 years old shouldn't be shown television at all. They need real human beings to learn languages.
and linuxquestions.org
A child of that age is a sponge for languages, and can learn more than one at a time. But they key is that the child is looking at a person who is speaking the language to him or her, and listening to it being spoken.
"A video" is not the same thing. A very young child doesn't associate a picture on a flat device with being a person. S/He doesn't associate that with "speech."
People are different, communities are different but the claim is same.
Are there any studies about whether children learn the spoken language from the television/podcasts or not?
Considering that a reputable website like BBC has special section for learning English through podcasts, my question is:
- From what age children start learning the spoken language from the television/podcasts?
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It appears that children don't learn language well from television because they need interaction and conversation. It's not so much that the "picture on a flat device [isn't] a person", but more that the child doesn't get a response when they try to talk back to the picture. In one study, when children had a conversation over Skype with an adult, they were more responsive to new words than when viewing a pre-recorded adult.
In subsequent tests, the kids who’d been in a live video chat showed evidence of having learned the new words. They were able, for instance, to recognize new examples of “meeping” (a puppet turning the dial on another, different toy), and their performance was just as good as that of kids who’d been tutored by somebody in the flesh.
But the kids who’d been in fake conversations didn’t show any sign of learning.
Quote from a BabyCenter blog post about the study
Link to the study (Roseberry et al., "Skype Me! Socially Contingent Interactions Help Toddlers Learn Language", Child Development 2013)
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