Teaching Foreign Languages To Young Learners

Once, experts feared that young children exposed to more than one language would suffer “language confusion,” which might delay their speech development. Today, parents often are urged to capitalize on that early knack for acquiring language. Upscale schools market themselves with promises of deep immersion in English — or Mandarin — for everyone, starting in kindergarten or even before as stated by Perri Klass, M.D. The New York Times, October 10, 2011. Hence, teaching foreign languages to young learners is gaining popularity all over the world and as a result the age for learning a second/foreign language is being reduced in many countries. In the field of second language acquisition (SLA), how specific aspects of learning a non-native language

The issue of age for learning languages has been the scope of linguistic and SL education studies for a long time triggering two strands of thoughts about age. Nevertheless, a closer examination of the ways in which age combines with other variables reveals a more complex picture, with both favourable and unfavourable age-related differences being associated with early- and late-starting L2 learners (Johnstone 2002). Those in favor of “younger is better” case (e.g., Krashen, 1981) argued that L2 development of children and adult involve different process. The former, need to utilize innate properties of language acquisition as in L1 acquisition while the latter, need to employ general problem-solving abilities. However, others believed in “older is better”, they think that older learners have cognitive and literacy skills that tend to enhance L2 development (McLaughlin 1987; Snow 1983). The ‘critical period hypothesis’ (CPH) is a particularly relevant case in point. It’s generally believed that the age at which learners begin to learn L2 influence the attainment of language knowledge, because it is held that the brain loses its plasticity after the age of puberty. In reference to the plasticity of the brain, Penfield and Robert (1959, cited in Marshall, 2000) were the first to introduce the idea of critical period which is later linked to the idea of

Holly (1987) compiled a summary of many studies and pointed out that most indicated that self-esteem is the result rather than the cause of academic achievement. In addition, Dr Martin Covington (1989) from the University of California carried out an extensive review of the research on the relationship between self-esteem and achievement, concluding that “self-esteem can be modified through direct instruction and that such instruction can lead to achievement gains. ”This statement is consistent with the experience of the writer, who has conducted two research projects (Andres, 1993, 1996)in the area of self-esteem, and the findings have led her to conclude that self-esteem can be modified and enhanced in the foreign language classroom, and that significant gains can be observed in the area of EFL/ESL learning. This point is considered to be of the utmost importance in the classroom: as teachers we can exert an influence both on the performance and well-being of our students. As Brown (1994) says, good teachers succeed “because they give optimal attention to linguistic goals and to the personhood of their students.