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?

Over the last years, some experts argue that it is easier for children to learn a new language when they are at primary school than secondary school. In this essay, I will explore the pros and cons of this idea and try to draw some conclusions.

I will start by looking at the advantages of learning a foreign language at primary school. One of the main positives of children is that they are like sponges acquiring any kind of knowledge. Learning a foreign language in primary school by teaching some of the subjects in a different language from the mother tongue would be much easier for little children who have not yet developed their sense of the ridiculous and are not afraid of making mistakes.

What is more, children would learn a another language by playing games and doing different activities as they grow up and by the age of starting secondary school, they would be able to speak a foreign language as well as their mother tongue. For instance, I lived in France for 5 years while I was attending primary school and I learned French without notice.

On the other hand, nowadays few teachers have the necessary language skills themselves. The language level in primary schools would not be standardised and in secondary school there would exist different language levels being difficult to follow the class properly for some students or being too easy or slow for others. In other words, the goals achieved in the previous years could be compromised.

To conclude, there are both advantages and disadvantages of learning a foreign language at primary school, but the educational system should encourage and propose the means to achieve this objective adequately so that the language level would be standardised in every school.