ARTESOL NEWSLETTER AHGF:NTINA TESOL
Fa1l2000 Pcrsoneria Juridica IGJ 464
DOES YOUNGER
=
BETTER?
by David Nunan This articlc first
appenred
in the Junc/July
1999 issue o/ TM
What do Costa Rica, Thailand, and Italy have in cornmon? 1 guess the possibilities are endless. However, in terms of language education, they al! have at least one thing in common -- in each country, the government has recently made English compulsory at .the elementary level of the schooling system. They are not alone in this. Around the world, children are being compel!ed to leam English at younger and younger ages. At a governmental level, this trend has been prompted by an unprecedented, global explosion in the demand for English, which, in turn, is driven by economic and technological factors. English is seen as an essential tool, either for economic and technological development or for maintaining a perceived or actual superiority in the economic and technological marketplace. Governmental policy initiatives are reinforced at a personal level by parents who perceive that competence in English wil! give their children a comparative advantage when it comes to further education and employment. This development might be seen as a great opportunity for us as English language educators. The whole world wants our skil!s and knowledge. However, this development isn't necessarily al! good news. Over the past few months, 1 have worked with teachers from LatĂn America, Europe, and Asia, who are being required to introduce English in the early years of schooling. All expressed considerable concern at the development. Although governments want more English taught in school, there appears to be a general reluctance to come up with adequate levels of funding. In a number of countries, elementary school teachers are being deployed or redeployed as English teachers without training, resources, or support. The notion that if you can speak the language, you can teach it, is alive and well -even at official government levels. Reluctance to provide adequate funding for English language edu-
Argentina
TESOL Newsletter
Fall 2000
cation is reinforced by the economic difficulties confronting many countries at the present time. In these and other countries, then, the matter becomes a political issue of getting adequate resources to enable teachers, curriculum developers, and material writers to design, deliver, and evaluate effective language pragrams. Behind the drive to introduce English at younger and younger ages is the assumption that younger is better, that a child who begins leaming English (or any other language, for that matter) at the age of 5 wil! be more proficient in the language at age 12 than wil! a child who begins learning at age 8. It is an assumption that rarely appears to be questioned at the level of policy. So what does research have to say on the questi.on of the optimal age to begin foreign language study? Unfortunately, most of the research is irrelevant to settings in which English is taught as a foreign language. Many of the c1aims in favor of beginning language study in elementary school are based on North American investigations into the effects of foreign language programs in the elementary school (FLES). Not only are these studies noncomparable, several of the more praminent studies suffer frorn poor research design, which cal!s into question the validity of their results. Research into the education of irnmigrant children in the U.S. and Canada has also been cited to support the "younger = better" position. However, the context of this research is also very different from the EFL contexts to which the results are extrapolated. Again, some of the more prominent studies suffer frorn questionable research designo Regardless of the prablems of interpretation created by contextual factors and faulty research design, the results themselves are by no means c1earcut. In his book-Iength review of the research, Singleton (1989) asserts that "there is no consistent support in the literature for the notion that younger second language learners leam more efficiently or successful!y than older learners" (p. 137). He concludes that "the 'younger = better' premise on which the case for the early introduction of second languages (Continues
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