ielts: learn a language in primary school or secondary school?

Some people think that it is better for children to begin to learn a foreign language at primary school than at secondary school. What is your opinion?

Acquiring a second language becomes a useful skill to most people today due to the increasing globalization. Thus it raises a question to the public that when should children start to learn another language. I suggest the children who learn a foreign language at elementary school will have more benefits than the ones at secondary school.

Firstly, young kids have more time to focus on the study of a new language, compared with the older students. Students normally have more subjects to study when they finish primary school and enter into secondary. Take China as an example, pupils only have three main subjects, whilst high school students have six. Hence, children need to allocate their time to more tasks after they go to high school, leading to less time spent on studying a new language, which, by contrast, needs a lot of time to learn well.

Apart from that, it is easier for children to learn a foreign language when they are young because of their good memory. Research shows that the best period of people's memory is between 10 to 15 years old. Generally speaking, learning language need recite a lot of materials including words, grammar and phrases. Thus, on this stage, primary school students have more advantages than their older competitors.

Admittedly, learning language is more than recitation, instead, it's also about studying the culture behind that language. High school students usually have higher abilities on understanding, which is an important capability for culture studying. However, even students begin to learn a foreign language at their elementary school, they also could learn the culture when they start high school.

In conclusion, though it will never be too late to start to learn a second language, students start to learn it in elementary school will have more advantages than who start in secondary school.

Plz fell free to give any comments. I've tried ielts for several times, but always get 6 on writting. I know there should me many problems in my essay, but I couldn't figure them out.

Thanks!

Hi Lei,

I think you could have added one more idea - that a child who learns a foreign language during primary school has less inhibitions than his secondary school counterpart in expressing foreign language. So a child becomes more comfortable expressing foreign language when he learns it during primary schooling.

Also, 10 to 15 years for "Good Memory" idea covers both primary and secondary which doesn't compare two cases well. Is that the case in your country, if yes it should be specified.

For instance, in India we have

First five years - Class 1st to 5th - Primary School
Next five years - Class 6th to 10th - Secondary School
Last two years - Class 11th to 12th - Higher Secondary or Senior Secondary School.

Hope it helps.

Thanks Jay! That's a great idea and that's really helpful.

It seems I didn't provide an convincing example...I'll think about it and try to improve it.