Some experts believe that it is better for children to begin learning a foreign language at primary school rather than secondary school. Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?
It is common today that an average person knows at least one language besides its native, mother tongue. However, there are differences in an opinion regarding what age is the most suitable for start one's official education in an additional language. It is argued that it is beneficial for children to start learning new language at primary school rather than secondary school. This will be shown by looking at how the early age and unfull development of self-awareness bring merits to student's acceptibility of language related knowledge.
Firstly, repeated psychological test have shown that there is a specific time gap in every human being's mental development in which areas of brain related to speech (Broca and Wernick) must be stimulated in order to accept unknown words and phonems. This can be seen on the example of children who had missed necessary stimuli of human's company in the age from 3 to 8 years of old and because of that became unable to communicate with people. When Google is searched for that term, a few real life examples of these mute children appear. From this, it can be concluded that early age of 3 to 8 years of old is crucial in the learning of a language. Thus, it is understandable why many consider that adopting of new language should start at elementary school.
Additionally, there is a significant amount of fear when learning a new language as there is immense chance of making a mistake, especially in speaking. This is very closely related to self-consciousness which isn't fully developed in the early age of student in the primary school. Since the fear of being embarassed is decreased, those students are more open-minded, fearless and thus, more receptive to process of learning foreign language. As a result, it is obvious why is superior to begin one's language education at primary school.
Following the analyzation of how early age of primary school's students is beneficial to their capability of learning foreign language, it is clear that that particular age is better for beginning of learning new language compared to the age of students at secondary school. It is expected that this strategy become and remain strong foothold in education programmes the world over.