Lead
Among parents of young children, the anxiety is familiar: we need to start English early, before the window closes. The idea that children's brains are more plastic, more absorbent in the early years, feels intuitively correct — and it has the appearance of scientific backing. Early-enrollment English conversation classes, English picture books, English-dubbed cartoons: parents encounter these choices constantly, and the framing around them usually implies urgency.
But second-language acquisition (SLA) researchers have been working on this question for more than 40 years, and the picture that has emerged looks somewhat different from the popular narrative. The emerging consensus is that when you start matters less than how much exposure you accumulate, and in what form. That conclusion deserves to be taken seriously.