Topic: Foreign Language Instruction Should Begin in Kindergarten, Discuss.
Submitted to: - Rob Horlin
Submitted by: - Ranjit Singh
Student ID - 13903
Class- EAP 2A
Date -29-08-2014
Foreign language instruction should begin in kindergarten, discuss.
Foreign language is a language native to other nation. Learning a foreign language is becoming essential nowadays and it can change the way of life. To communicate and trade with people from different nations there is a great need of learning foreign languages. English language is used globally and for some nations it is a first language and for some it is considered as the second language. French, Spanish etc are the other popular foreign languages. Being bilingual
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Children have greater opportunities at college and for career by studying foreign languages and also they have bigger view of the world because they see and understand the other culture. Starting foreign language instructions from kindergarten also enhance the communications skills and when a kid becomes adult he knows the different ways to refer an object and at the elementary level mind is open to ideas of global understanding. An obvious advantage of learning more than one language is you will have expanded access to resources. Knowing a second language from the kindergarten level benefits a child in his academics, career and will open up additional job opportunities. There are many negative aspects of teaching foreign languages at early stage or at preschool. At kindergarten level children are not fully developed both physically and mentally, instructing foreign language beside native language would confuse them, causing deficiency in proper function of languages. If the children pay more attention and importance to foreign language, then it will lead to native culture ignorance when they grow up and the value of the native language would be damaged. This would have detrimental effects on the entity of a nation. Encouraging two languages simultaneously prevents either language from developing well and the child may have lack of proficiency in both languages. As the
Keeping the native language doesn’t make a child ignorant or discriminate. I must say it because some fathers believe that if the kid doesn’t learn English first, will acquire an accent.
The United States is becoming more and more bilingual every day. It is important for students of the United States of America to keep up with the advancing world. The easiest way to learn a second language is when a person is young. This is why it would be beneficial for schools to start teaching a foreign language in kindergarten and continuing it through twelfth grade. Students are more likely to learn and remember a foreign language if they are introduced to it at a young age. A majority of other countries teach foreign languages to their students throughout their school lives. Most students coming out of high school in other countries are totally
Foreign Language, Noun: Any language used in a country other than one’s own; a language that is mostly for cultural insight. In many Middle schools taking a foreign language in does not count towards high school. Our school should allow any student’s credits of taking a foreign language in middle school, count towards high school.
By expanding ourselves past the comfort of the native tongue, we are able to create connections with other people. When learning another language, we may start to understand not only the language itself, but also comprehend new cultures, ways of thinking, and other people. From the very beginning of deciding to become a teacher, I knew I wanted to expand my ways of thinking so I positively benefit students of all cultures and language. I believe language learning allows people to view the world in different ways by becoming positively influenced by other cultures, people, and different ways of thinking. However, after deciding to become an ESL teacher, I truly believe that bilingual education is needed to help students develop and maintain high levels of proficiency and literacy in both their L1 and L2, while learning in the content areas. This is why I personally believe it is better for children to be raised bilingual instead of learning a second language later in life. One reason for this is that even though I was born in America, my parents wanted me to learn their language, which was Polish. Now, I am fully appreciative of the fact that my parents taught me Polish and placed me in a Saturday school where I was being taught both English and Polish. If I was taught Polish later in life, I think I would not use it to this day because I would not have made personal connections with the languages, as I was able to by being raised bilingual. There are many benefits of being raised bilingual instead of learning a second language later in life. It is important to understand that it takes on average 4-7 years to become academically fluent in a language; by raising a child bilingually, the children are able to use both languages more efficiently earlier than those students who learn a second language later in life. Since the child has been bilingual for a longer time, there are educational benefits commonly found. Bilingual children tend to have a higher concentration and are better at working through distractions while doing their schoolwork. Bilingual children also perform higher on average on tests that involve multi-tasking, creative thinking, or problem solving (Marian & Shook, 2012).
With successive bilingualism a child has the advantage of their first language as a base. They use this to both analyze and develop the second. For example, the child knows that language is organized in a particular order. The more mature a child is they also have a better vocabulary base, acoustic perception, and comprehension. Therefore they would make fewer errors in a second language.
In my opinion bilingualism plays a major role in the educational development of children. This is because research has shown that children who are fluent in their home language are more successful in learning a second language. Furthermore, being bilingual offers greater sensitivity to language, more flexibility in thinking and better ear for listening. It also improves a child’s understanding for the native language. Moreover, knowledge of other languages increases a career of opportunities offering several job options.
Foreign languages help students compete to be accepted into top schools. Many colleges require a foreign language for admission, but more than that it teaches students important study skills needed to be accepted to and excel in college. The memory is like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes. Learning a foreign language exercises the memory, thus making it easier to remember facts from other classes. Students who study a foreign language also find their English improves. By learning a language, students learn English grammar, sentence construction and parts of speech, helping them excel in English and other classes that require writing.
After watching this, I now feel that it would be very beneficial for a child to learn a second language because like the video says, it opens up more future opportunities for the child. In the article, “Chinese, English, Spanish” by Tom McArthur, it talks about how English is one of the most popular languages today, and how variations of English can be heard or read almost everywhere. Although English is a very popular language, it is always an advantage to know other languages. In the video, it states that knowing just English is actually a limitation in life because so many jobs want bilingual
Second benefit is improvement of social skills. Knowing a different language helps children to adapt easily to a new environment, increasing his/her self-esteem and self-confidence. How would you feel if someone asks you a question and you don’t understand? I know that feeling. Children feel more confident and secure and will never feel humiliated by not being able to communicate.
We may see teaching our children different languages as a means for them to communicate with our extender family and pass on our cultural heritage or as extender knowledge for the child. In addition to the aforementioned reasons to learn more than one language, research indicates there is
Being bilingual will not only help you communicate with others but also give you many different opportunities. Being bilingual is just not about speaking another language but also learning the culture that comes with it. From the new language you will learn about other traditions, music, food, and overall the way others speak and express themselves. Another thing you can acquire from being bilingual is the chance of getting a better job and develop professionally better. Studies also show that bilinguals express themselves better and that it’s better to start learning a second language at an early age. There is doubts about teaching a children a second language because some people believe that if they teach them a second language at an early age it can cause confusion in the child, and they will end up not being able to learn either one correctly. This information has not yet been proven what studies have shown is the complete opposite which is that a bilingual person has a higher possibility of being successful than a monolingual.
To begin, I am going to summarize the video of “Does learning languages make kids smarter?” of the program “Your voice” which you can find it in the following page multilingualliving.com.
According to hegp.org ,a Harvard website, “Secondly, supporting children’s acquisition of multiple languages and retention of heritage language seems critical not only for their process of transculturation but also for strengthening democratic engagement in a globalized world.” This view takes more of an authoritative stand on the benefits of having more education
It has been shown that learning a second language from primary school has cognitive and academic benefits. When a child becomes bilingual it helps to develop stronger communication skills in their native language and learn additional new languages at a faster rate. Majority language students who learn score significantly higher on the IOWA, SAT and ACT tests than minority language students. Being a bilingual child enhance ability to adapt to changing situations and engage in high level cognitive thinking. When bilingual child grow they are more employable and they get more carrier opportunities than monolingual person. So there is reason enough to learn second language and to keep learning them as we are able. The bilingualism advantages may not appear in the child’s primary age. But bilingualism’s real benefits could be far more important. A good bilingual primary program is a great way to support the development of children in their native language and also a good start to them toward a future of fully bilingual professional
A foreign language is language indigenous to another country. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to; i.e. English speaker living in Gaum can say that Chamorro is a Foreign Language to him or her. Following are the foreign languages