When I was at school in England (which is a few more years ago than I would care to admit) I was taught French. Now I have to admit I didn’t really want to learn French, nobody asked me to learn French, and I personally didn’t see the benefit of learning French in the first place. But they taught me nonetheless.
If I remember correctly, I first started studying basic French in the last few years of primary school (grade 4 or 5?). It seemed like an enormous chore and even through high school I never had a particularly rosy feeling about French class (even though I was fairly good at it).
What I don’t fully understand is why we started so late. Now many people may argue that grade 4 is not exactly late, and that a 9/10 year old should be able to learn a foreign language with ease. Now it is probably true that at 9 years old I did a much better job at taking it all in than I do at my current age (35) but it is also true that I would have done an even better job had I started the French osmosis at an earlier age.
Studies show that children have an innate ability to learn a language from the moment they are born (possibly even earlier), and can learn at a startling rate with ease. They will soak up the vocabulary and automatically figure out grammar rules with no need for specific instruction. This ability, however, switches off at around the ages of 10 – 12 when language learning becomes increasingly difficult and grammar rules must be learned and remembered rather than instinctively constructed.
My question therefore, is why do we (or did we) begin teaching new languages to children with only a year or two left before their learning abilities begin to wane. What’s wrong with starting to learn French (or Chinese, or Spanish, which are probably more appropriate today) in grade 1 (or even earlier by parents)? Get them early. For one the students will have at least five years of learning at their peak capacity and should be able to get an excellent grounding in whatever language they are learning; and two, if taught well, students could learn to enjoy the language and appreciate the benefits of being able to speak a second language.
I am pretty sure if I had been taught earlier I would still be able to hold basic conversations in French rather than retaining inane phrases like ‘I live in a big town in the centre of England’. I still have never found a use for it.
