
Originally Posted by
wotcha
The following is a 2 minutes minute speech menuscript manuscript from my student on earlier childhood
English education.
I firstly proofread and checked some grammatical errors and hope you guys
give it another check up.
Good morning everybody. Today I’m going to tell you why early childhood English learning has, in fact, no advantages at all, especially in Korea. That is, we don’t need to force 1st grade elementary school kids students to study English at schools school and homes home .
It makes sense that the earlier you start, the more progress you will make compared with someone who started later. However, there is evidence that this is not the case, particularly if the foreign language comes to take the place of the first language (Please cite some of this evidence).
In the Philippines, for example, English is not a foreign language but a second language, so they can acquire English in natural settings as they are born (This means that they somehow acquire the language when they are born). It is very natural and necessary for Philippinoes to begin learning English as soon as they start school (It may or may not be necessary but why is it natural?). On the contrary, we Koreans don’t use English as a second common language. It is just a first foreign language, resulting in the impossibility of natural English acquisition (So...are you implying that Koreans can't learn?) . It means that we should use the Korean language as a medium of English language learning.
Therefore, if you are already literate in Korean, you can use some of your knowledge about Korean to learn English. We all know that adolescents and adults are in many ways better at learning a new language than children (Completely untrue. Children are better at learning languages than older people.) .
However, I’m not saying that we should start learning English from in the middle school years. The answer to what's when is the best age to learn a new language is not simple and pretty much depends on the situation. Nevertheless, I dare say, it is good and soon enough for Korean to start learning English in the 4th or 5th grade in elementary school, since we have to use Korean as a medium of English learning.