Beliefs among parents and teachers on how languages are learned

Nowadays, people say English is very important to communicate with other people, to travel or to get a good job. But there are some beliefs that I would like to reflect on.

In my school, teachers think that the sooner children learn English, the better. That’s why in the lasts years they have been teaching English from Pre-School. Parents agree with this, and a lot of them bring their children to extracurricular classes of English or Sports in English from Pre-School.

After reading some investigations about this, the studies indicate that older learners obtain higher results than younger learners. In my opinion, the importance to learn English it’s in the way teachers teach it, and not the age when children start to learn it. I think that because I started learning English in First of Primary, and I was taught with books, a lot of grammar, and the teacher spoke to us in Catalan, not English. During my studies in the University, I had the opportunity to study abroad, and do practices in a school of Austria. There, children start to learn English in third of Primary and they start with speaking and comprehension, and it’s not until Secondary that they don’t start with writing, reading and grammar. After this, I think that in my age they have a better level than me.

Another belief that teachers have is that younger children are more motivated than oldest. They say that from fifth or sixth of Primary until Secondary, children are demotivated, they don’t want to participate or don’t want to try speaking English. I think, that can be for the way English is taught in the different ages. In Pre-School teachers use songs, games or storytellings and in Primary, they start learning grammar and use a lot the books.