Children undergo various stages in developing and mastering languages, which are affected by natural and environmental factors such as their parents languages and peers. Aschildren grow, they tend to imitate the language spoken by their parents or those tending to them.Likewise, brain injuries can affect language development in numerous ways, especially during early childhood. According to Allen and Kelly (85-87), children generally learn from their parents from their childhood up to the age of 8, after which environmental factors like education and schools affect their learning and cognitive development. The critical period for language
development starts from birth to puberty, as it is evident in both bilingualism and cases of people recovering from brain injuries.
The critical period for learning a second language happens from birth to puberty. According to Trafton (1), the best time for a person to learn a second language starts from the age of 10 up to 18, while many children master their first languages by the age of 10. Children pick languages more easily compared to adults because of a higher language retention capacity.
However, Josh Tenenbaum, an MIT professor, notes that there have always been challenges in ascertaining the certainty of the critical period for learning languages. Bilingualism helps in understanding that there is a crucial period in language development but does not offer certainty about how long the window lasts.
Children recovering from brain injuries that affected their language formation areas relearn their languages faster than adults, which shows a critical learning period for language development. Liégeois et al. (388) note that there is a high chance that brain injuries may have a significant impact on language development. Both children and adults face adverse effects on their language in cases of language development. However, because of the ease of grasping
languages, children have better language development while recovering from brain injury. The belief that there is a critical period for language development is true due to research that shows children learning languages better from birth to puberty. Similar results have been observed for people recovering from brain injuries where children have shown a faster language learning ability than their adult counterparts. However, the exact age when the critical period ends has not been established because of challenges in obtaining data that would accurately
establish this age.