In Japan, English education will start next year from the third grade at elementary school. It has been said that Japanese people are less proficient in English than people in other countries, so the Japanese government decided to improve their nations' English skills.
However, some people say that we should improve our mother language during elementary school days instead of spending the time to study English, because the mother language is the most important language that should be improved and is a fundamental part of our identity as a Japanese. They say that people who don't learn their mother language well will struggle to learn English as a second language and that it is not too late to study English after being a junior high school student. What do you think about early English education?
Replies
I grew up speaking Russian with my mom and dad (dad spoke English to me as well, not mom). I think I am at a greater advantage than monolingual people just by being bilingual. I do think all children should be required to learn a 2nd language early on and everyone should be bilingual.
five nights at freddy's
Hello, Kaitlin Hurt. Thank you for your comment and for sharing your experience.
Hi, Rosemary. Thank you for sharing your opinion. Great! I agree with you. You said all I want to say.
here we start from the young age to learn English, eventhough not fluent still we can understand english and talk broken english.
if you come here, its easy to communicate and you wont get lost. =)
Hi, Fizzy. Thank you for your comment. It is good for foreigners to be able to communicate in English.
Hi Tam,
Spaniards are not skilled also at a second language, surely several factors take part in this but I agree English is taught from an early age. I really admire watching kids speaking not only his/her mother language or children whose parents belong to different cultures.
The video Rose shared is amazing... wow! ...and make me think how silly I am for languages :D
Hi, Estanis. Thank you for your comment. Children's ears seem to be able to memorize English pronunciation easily and more correctly than adults. English pronunciation is influenced by pronunciation of the mother language for adults.
Hi Tam.
We have a German saying: "What Hänschen doesn't learn, Hans will never learn."
We always call Hänschen when someone's name is Hans as long as he's a little boy.
The meaning: What you don't learn as a small child, you will never learn so easily and perfectly later.
It is not that difficult for young children to learn different languages at the same time, as they can distinguish very precisely when they need to speak which language, depending on the person with whom they speak. Then they quickly switch from one language to another.
It's like a single language for them, I think. There are to them just different words for the same thing. I think we often use different words for the same thing in each language.
For children who multilingual grow up, it's just an expanded vocabulary. I envy them very much, to be honest, because learning a language at a late age is not that easy.
Look at the child:
https://youtu.be/KXGmt0dusdo
It's incredible!
Oi, Iris
Lol, we have a similar saying in Polish - What Jaś did not learn, Jan will never know. Jaś is little Jan. :-)
Hi, Rys. Nice to know that. I would like to know if others also have similar sayings in that sense.
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