Thus, lessons can utilize elements learned from understand how the brain naturally learns a language to augment the student's ability to progress more efficiently in learning a second language later on in life. Lessons would produce the environment which calls on the same type of brain functions that were so crucial in language acquisition in early childhood. Thus, teaching can become an extension of pre-existing strategies the students have already used earlier on in their lives without even knowing it. This means lesson plans built on a structure that highlights the importance of language at the phonic level, as this is what the author asserts as the primary vehicle for language acquisition in young children.
Lightbrown & Spada (2006) also provide evidence which would back up Kuhl's claims in the text How Languages Are Learned. In their discussion of early language acquisition, Lightbrown & Spada (2006) explain how the child's linguistic abilities go from simple crying, to repeating of particular sounds and sound...
Even the youngest children break languages down into phonetic blocks and can recognize the differences in sounds. External research "demonstrated that tiny babies can hear the difference between 'pa' and 'ba,' for example" (Lightbrown & Spada 2006 p 2). Essentially, the text is showing how phonetics play an important part of language acquisition even at the earliest stages of language development, and how phonetic strategies continue to play a huge role in how children and adults of all ages can learn a second language using the already pre-established strategies their brains relied on when they were in their most ripe stages of development. As such, one can clearly see the importance of phonetics training and emulation in teaching people of all ages a second language.
References
Kuhl, Patricia K. (2010). Brain mechanisms in early language acquisition. Neuron, 67(5), 713-727. Doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2010.08.038
Lightbrown, Patsy M. & Spada, Nina. (2006). How Languages are…
