When referring to the languages I speak they are English, French, Spanish, Italian and Polish which to many may seem like an impressive number but before some get the idea that I should be admired for my linguistic skills I would like to say that this is due more to circumstances then skill. First of all I was born in New York City where I spent the first 3 months before being sent away to live with my grandparents who spoke both Spanish and Italian, so unsurprisingly the languages I started speaking were Spanish and Italian. By the time I was five years of age I spoke both these languages well however I did not speak English at all so it was with this in mind among other things that my parents brought me back to New York where I started learning English. It was strange to me at first; going to school in a country that was my own hearing people speak a language that I did not understand. With time however since I was still at that early age in which languages come with ease; English started becoming more and more comprehensible and in a bigger way it was the cartoons I watched on television which I had already seen in Spanish that helped me. It is because of this factor which I experienced when I learned English at the age of 5 that I can lay claim that those who are in their very youthful years need not to have languages taught to them as they will learn them their own. It is with this in mind that I urge parents whose wish it is for their children to learn a foreign language or two to simply expose their child to the language as I was by my parents who sent me to a school where everybody spoke English.
Of course when giving this advise I have not lost sight of the fact that not all parents have at their disposal the chance to send their child to a school where the language they want their child to learn is spoken either because they do not live in a country where it is spoken or they don’t have the funds to send their child to a school in which all subjects are carried out in that language. It is to these parents that I suggest that constant exposure to that language by all means at their disposal would be the most appropriate. When I say this I have in mind that parents naturally if they speak the language in question should do so with their children; this basically being the way most people get to speak a language at the start; from their parents.