“Many people think children should learn foreign languages as soon as possible. However, some people reckon that learning foreign languages at early age will have affect negatively the process of learning mother-tongue.” Discuss the two views and give your opinion.

In recent years, it has been increasingly common to see children at kindergarten age initiate comprehending a second language. While many believe that children should begin learning a foreign language at the earliest, others have a negative attitude towards that exposing to another language early will pose too much pressure on youngsters and affect the acquisition of their first language. This essay will discuss both these beliefs and state the writer’s opinion. On the one hand, it is discernable that children at younger ages have better problem-solving and other cognitive abilities. Children who speak more than one language learn to negotiate meaning as a crucial part of communicating in more than one language system. The patent benefits of introducing a new language at an early stage is that helps children with problem-solving tasks, and gives them the ability to seek many kinds of approaches to solve problems. Research shows that there is a relation between bilingualism and several abilities, including the ability to think abstractly about language and reason nonverbally. Secondly, by early exposure, children can get a better understanding of diverse cultures and connect with people speaking other languages. In other words, pupils using more than one language have the opportunity to become more culturally aware and appreciate cultural differences, which helps them be more open to distinct ways of thinking and allows them to experience the world with new eyes. Finally, it would be utterly possible for children who become bilingual very young to develop an ear for languages. In this way, they will be able to achieve better pronunciation and fluency later on in life. This is due to the fact that, when learning a foreign language, children are given the opportunity to hear and distinguish meaning from very discrete sounds. According to expert in the field of linguistics Stephen Krashen, acquirers who begin natural exposure to second languages during childhood generally achieve higher second language proficiency than those beginning as adults. On the other hand, a host of progressives protest that children in critical periods learning a foreign language will take advantage. Unlike adolescents, young kids are not inhibited by self-consciousness, therefore, it leads them to have some notion of unwilling, disaffected pupils being focused to learn something and get mixed up or confused in the process to acquire the mother language. Besides that, there are a number of possible reasons as to why older learners appear to out-perform younger learners in the rate of language acquisition. They have a better knowledge of language patterns, are better at more cognitively demanding tasks, have more developed strategies and skills, and they have more experience acquiring facts and concepts. Based on previous studies, learners who have acquired general knowledge and experience are in a stronger position to develop a new language than those who haven’t. Older learners are better at the rate and success of second language acquisition. In conclusion, while some people are concerned about the negative impacts that kids might have on learning foreign languages at an early age, it seems to me that the benefits of educating the second language in this stage to children are more significant.