Autor: prof. Bogdan Georgiana
Sursă imagine: https://www.cambridgeforlife.org/articles/learning-english/the-importance-of-learning-english-at-an-early-age
The age of our students is a major factor in our decisions about how and what to teach. People of different ages have different needs, competences and cognitive skills; me might expect children of primary age to acquire much of a foreign language through play, for example, whereas for adults we can reasonably expect a greater use of abstract thought.
One of the most common beliefs about age and language learning is that young children learn faster and more effectively than any other age group. Most people can think of examples which appear to bear this out – as when children move to a new country and appear to pick up a new language with remarkable ease. However, as we shall see, this is not always true of children in that situation, and the story of child language facility may be something of a myth.
It is certainly true that children who learn a new language early have a facility with the pronunciation which is sometimes denied older learners. Lynne Cameron suggests that children „reproduce the accent of their teachers with deadly accuracy” ( 2003:111). Carol Read recounts how she hears a young student of hers saying:” Listen. Quiet now. Attention, please!” in such a perfect imitation of the teacher that ” the thought of parody passes through my head” ( 2003:7).
Apart from pronunciation ability, however, it appears that older children ( that is children from about the age of 12) ” seem to be far better learners than younger ones in most aspects of acquisition, pronunciation excluded” ( Yu, 2006: 53).
The relative superiority of older children as language learners ( especially in formal educational settings) may have something to do with their increased cognitive abilities which allow them to benefit from more abstract approaches to language teaching. It may also have something to do with the way younger children are taught. Lynne Cameron, quoted above, suggests that teachers of young learners need to be especially alert and adaptive in their response to tasks and have to be able to adjust activities on the spot.
It is not being suggested that young children cannot acquire second languages successfully. As we have already said, many of them achieve significant competence, especially in bilingual situations. But in learning situations, teenagers are often more effective learners. Yet English is increasingly being taught at younger and younger ages. This may have great benefits of terms of citizenship, democracy, tolerance and multiculturalism, for example (Read 2003), but especially when there is ineffective transfer of skills and methodology from primary to secondary school, early learning does not always appear to offer the substantial success often claimed for it.
Nor is it true that older learners are necessarily ineffective language learners. Research has shown that they ” can reach high levels of proficiency in their second language” ( Lightbown and Spada: 73). They may have greater difficulty in approximating native speaker pronunciation than children do, but sometimes this is a deliberate ( or even subconscious) retention of their cultural and linguistic identity.
WORKS CITED
Cameron, L 2003 Challenges for ELT from the expansion in teaching children. ELT Journal 57/2
Read, C 2003 Is younger better? English Teaching Professional 28
Lightbown, P and Spada, N 2006 How Languages are Learned 3rd edition Oxford University Press
Harmer, Jeremy The Practice of English Language Teaching 4th edition Pearson Longman
