Learning another foreign language - here's what research has to say
Maria Kihlstedt, lecturer, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre, CNRS UMR 7114 Modyco (Modeles Dynamiques Corpus)
... Increasing mobility of people, mixed marriages and the political will to introduce an earlier living language into schools - and two living languages before entry into sixth grade according to the recommendation of the European Commission - make that many children today are confronted very early with several languages.
Despite this societal evolution, bilingualism continues to generate as much fears as enthusiasm. "Better to learn French before you start learning another language", "if the child mixes his two languages, it is better for him to use only one" ..., as many affirmations that still resist the many denials made by research. These misconceptions about the alleged harmfulness of bilingualism seem to be particularly hard in some countries where monolingualism has long been the model. We forget that monolingualism is the exception: According to UNESCO, two thirds of the world's population speak more than one language every day ...