Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Children should wait to begin learning a foreign language until they start school. Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.
In these days, globalization is spread thoroughout the world, therefore communication with other country and culture is essential to develop the country and society. Most of the country stress the foreign language education, trying to perform the effective policies. In Korea, the government issued the bill to start the students to teach english from 3rd grade in elementary school. Some people asserts that foreign language need to be taught in school age. Others disagree with this assersion. Thus, in this paper, I will explain some reasons why I think that the starting age of foreign language learning should be as fast as early.
To begin with, Language is not the object of learning but of acquisition. Language is a habit. The famous linguist, Krashen, said that language is able to be acquired better than to be studied. If the foreign languages is taught as a kind of many subjects, children have tendency to consider the language learning irksome. For my example, I studied the english in my school age, suffering from memorizing the amounts of rules and taking the paper tests. Whereas I got the good grade with the high score. However I cannot still speak and write english free.
On top of that, there is a critical period of language learning. Approaching to 12, 13 age, children is not deemed to acquire the language, by linguists. Older the students is, harder the acquisition is. On this presupposition, it is positive that the younger children can acquire foreign language easily. For my 5 year-old daughter's example, she has learned english just 1 year with visit - teacher's help. Her good pronunciation and excellent intonation shows the efficacy of early starting.
In conclusion, I stated that language doesn't need to be taught as a school sbuject, but as a object of acquisition, and also argued that it is efficient to learn in younger age on the ground of critical period theory. I strongly believe that children need not to wait to begin learning foreign language until schoolage.