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?

There are conflicting opinions about when exactly

language

learning should take place in

school

. It is clear that there are disadvantages to moving

language

learning

to

Suggestion

in

primary rather than secondary level education, which relate to style and

content but

Accept comma addition

content, but

, overall, I would argue that the benefits outweigh those. A couple of the problems associated with moving

language

learning to an earlier stage of education are the nature of primary

school

learning and human resource limitations. Much of the emphasis in primary

school

has to be on developing basic skills, and fostering an enjoyment of learning rather than concentrating on separate subjects like a foreign

language

which can be done later. Another issue is that primary

school

teachers’ own education focuses much more on child development than on specific academic subject areas. Retraining existing teachers or employing new ones to teach foreign languages would be costly either in terms of time or money. More convincing arguments for a beneficial effect of

this

change are the rate of learning and pronunciation. Young children absorb

language

far more quickly and accurately than teenagers. They are natural mimics and so are able to pick up native-like pronunciation and

language

patterns to a greater degree than older children. A

further

argument for

introduction

Suggestion

introducing

at primary level is that it has been proven that

language

learning activates an area of the brain not reached by other subjects, and so it is helpful for overall mental development. The earlier

this

kind of learning takes place, the greater the effect on the child. To conclude, there clearly are strong arguments against introducing foreign

language

learning at primary level.

However

, these are problems that can be addressed and there seems to be greater evidence that starting young will lead to better outcomes.