Is there one right way to learn language?

There isn’t one miraculous way to learn language. Children the world over acquire the sounds, words, and grammar of their native language (or languages) in vastly different life and family environments. Parenting practices (and recommendations) also vary from place to place. Yet, a caregiver reading with a child, children playing outdoors, the hubbub of family: all of these are seeds for language learning.

In this series of comics, we will unveil the kinds of situations that make favourable language learning environments (and you may just find out that you’re doing a lot of these already!).

The scientific sources of our comic:

1. Lieven, E. V. M. (1994). Crosslinguistic and crosscultural aspects of language addressed to children. In C. Gallaway & B. J. Richards (Eds.), Input and interaction in language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2. Casillas, M., Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2019). Early language experience in a Tseltal Mayan village. Child Development. doi:10.1111/cdev.13349