911: 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? (290) Learning a foreign language is a long-term task. Some educationists hold a belief that it is better to learn a foreign language when children are in primary school rather than in secondary school. This opinion reflects both advantages and the disadvantages.
Learning a foreign language requires children to put successive effort on it and be consistent, because learning is a long process until the time we can put what we learnt into practice. Making an early impression of the language in children’s mind when they are in primary school can help them be familiar with the language they are going to study. Many scientific researches state that the older the people are becoming, the worse ability of memorizing they attempt to have.
As we all know, primary school provides children a play-centered educating
atmosphere, also known as the quality education. Learning a foreign language in primary school is a win-win strategy because combining learning and entertaining is a key to make the learning process more sufficient.
However, we should always keep in mind that children‘s ability of understanding the key points in the learning process is not as well as their ability of memorizing them. Some mistaken views will be remembered deeply and it is hard for children to correct them later. Additionally, it is possible that the teachers who teach foreign languages are not well-skilled, so the children will not have a solid foundation of foreign language study and the secondary school will be used to correct these misleading points.
To sum up, learning a foreign language is a complex process and children need to be cultivated the passion and the good habits of study earlier in primary school instead of secondary school. Thus, the effectiveness of learning a foreign language outweighs its limitation.