A study shows that a bilingual language program for babies can reach more families, and instructors, through online training for teachers.

When researchers at the University of Washington found that even babies whose parents are monolingual could rapidly learn a second language in a small classroom environment, a new challenge was born:

How could they expand their program?

One answer, the UW team found, was to create software that would train language tutors online — allowing the researchers’ curriculum and method to be replicated anywhere in the world.

A new study by UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, part of researchers’ ongoing work with infant education centers in Spain, not only found that bilingual teaching led to sustained English-language comprehension and vocabulary-building, but also that the method could be scaled up to serve more, and more economically diverse, children.

«We knew our research-based method worked to boost second language skills rapidly in infants, without negatively affecting their first language, but the question was, how can we train people worldwide to use it? Here, we show that online training works,» said Naja Ferjan Ramirez, the lead author of both studies who is a new assistant professor of linguistics at the UW and a former I-LABS research scientist.

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Materials provided by University of Washington. Original written by Kim Eckart. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.