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?
These days our planet has evolved into a global village. Contrary to the concept of living the rest of your life in the town you were born, today's life asks you to visit diffrent parts of the world and interact with people of diffrent origins. This has made it necessary for us to learn languages like English, Spanish, French and Arabic, which are spoken by a vast majority of world's population. Learning these languages early in life can help us in becoming thier proficient user.
Generally speaking, the learning capability of humans detoriate with againg. A person who can memorize multiplication tables upto 20 in grade Five, experiences great difficulty in memorizing a paragraph after graduating high school. Therefore, if children are taught foregin languages at a very young age they will learn at a more quicker pace.
Another aspect that should be considered here is, the fimilarity to diffrent language structures at a very young age will not cause conflict or confusion. This can be illustrated by considering the example of a native English speaker. If he is taught a language like Arabic, which has a very diffrent type of language structure, in secondary school, his concepts of the English sentence structure will be well established. This may effect his structuring of an Arabic sentence because he'll be tempted to use the concepts so recognizable to him. In contrast to which if the student is taught concepts of Arabic sentence structuring at primary school level. the concepts of his English structuring will not be that firm and will make space for the new concepts to sink in.
However it should be remembered that the fresh mind of a child can be used for learning science and math concepts too instead of foriegn languages. But than this will always depend on the priorities of the child & the future he wants for himself.
In a nutshell, the pros of learning foriegn languages at a primary stage of education definetly supercede it's cons. As at a young age a child ability to learn and adapt is exceptional
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omeralamgir wrote: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?
These days our planet has evolved into a global village. Contrary to the concept of living the rest of your life in the town you were born, today's life asks you to visit diffrent parts of the world and interact with people of diffrent origins. This has made it necessary for us to learn languages like English, Spanish, French and Arabic, which are spoken by a vast majority of the world's population. Learning these languages early in life can help us in becoming more proficient.
Generally speaking, the learning capability of humans detoriates as we age. A person who can memorize multiplication tables up to 20 in Grade Five, experiences great difficulty in memorizing a single paragraph after graduating high school. Therefore, if children are taught foreign languages at a very young age they will learn at a faster pace.
Another aspect that should be considered here is the exposure to different language structures at a very young age will not cause conflict or confusion. This can be illustrated by considering the example of a native English speaker. If he is taught a language like Arabic, which has a very diffrent type of language structure, in secondary school, his concepts of the English sentence structure will be well established. This may affect his structuring of an Arabic sentence because he'll be tempted to use the concepts so recognizable to him. In contrast to which, if the student is taught concepts of Arabic sentence structuring at primary school level, the concepts of his English structuring will not be that firm and will make space for the new concepts to sink in.
However, it should be remembered that the fresh mind of a child can be used for learning science and math concepts too, instead of foreign languages. But this will always depend on the priorities of the child & the future he wants for himself.
In a nutshell, the pros of learning foriegn languages at a primary stage of education supercede the cons. As, at a young age, a child's ability to learn and adapt is exceptional.