I think I don't tell a lie when I say that the level of English that we have Spanish citizens is quite unfortunate (If I could even say, half seriously half jokingly, that the level of Spanish is too!) And that many parents try to have their children study English from a very young age to have a preparation that many of us lack.
We have known for a long time that bilingualism has multiple advantages for children and that is why it might be interesting to bring the language to children from a very young age. However, At what age is it better to learn English? Perhaps since elementary school as in most schools in the country? Perhaps from preschool as in many autonomous communities? Perhaps from the nursery for children who choose to take them?
Does learning languages really bring benefits?
Yes it is. Learn languages it modifies our brain and makes it more agile. In addition, it gives us what is called cognitive flexibility, which is something like a greater ability to adapt to new situations and deal with them. It has also been seen that people who speak several languages seem to suffer Alzheimer's later than those who speak only one language and, if we speak of children, it seems that they have more creative and problem solving capabilities.
The sooner they start ...
One of the reasons to start very soon is to take advantage of the fact that children are "sponges". They have an incredible ability to learn and many parents decide to point children to nurseries or schools where they speak in English to learn as soon as possible. In a way, if the goal is that, it is a solution to consider. However, we must not forget that a language can be learned at any time in life. Don't we elders learn it too?
I comment this because excessive pressure or spending too much time learning English can take time for other more fun and useful things for young children, when they could learn it later.
What are just some classes in English where children play and have fun? Well perfect then, because the most important thing is that for them it is not a problem.
Live the language vs. a few hours a week
I tell this example whenever I speak English, and it is that it burned into my mind. In the open house visit of a school the director explained to us that the children started English at 4 years, but not at 3, in the first course. A mother, who had apparently taken her daughter to a nursery where they were taught English, was worried and asked the director why they did not do English at age 3, if their daughter had been learning in the nursery and now I would lose a year. Of course, at that time I did not know whether to laugh or cry, but I decided not to do anything because I saw that he was serious.
In order for a child to be bilingual, or for him to master a language in such a way that he can communicate correctly with people who speak in that language, he needs live the language. This is going to a daycare center where English is spoken most of the time and in various very different situations: that caregivers speak with children, that they speak to each other and even that children chatter words in English to make English a language. own of that place. Something like crossing the entrance door and entering a "mini-England".
The school I am talking about was not an international school, but a simple public school that offered one or two hours of English a week. I deduced that, since I was asking in that school, what the girl had done in the nursery would be the same, one or two hours a week of English where I would have learned to say some color, some number and some song that I would surely repeat without knowing the meaning , so what little I had learned in a year I could learn again in p4 without any problem (or at age 20 in 5 minutes of study).
Because one thing is that you go to a nursery or school where the language you are interested in learning is spoken a lot and a very different one that gives you an English class once or twice a week. That is why people, when they need to speak in English, travel somewhere where they speak that language. The immersion is such that you learn yes or yes. Well, in a school where teachers speak with children in English, both in class and outside it, and in which children also speak English with each other, the learning is real and the children end up mastering both English and Spanish, which is what they use in the street.
A clear example of this is what happens in Catalonia with Spanish and Catalan, with children who master both languages because in school there is a real immersion into the Catalan language. Then in the street they speak Spanish or Catalan, with the parents they also speak one or another language (in my house, for example, my wife speaks Catalan and I speak Spanish), and so They dominate both languages.
About a class from time to time, English drawings on TV and things like that is relatively useful. And I say relatively because because English is not lived in everyday life, learning is quite poor. In addition, it is limited in time because many children they lose interest when they see that they are learning a "dead" language. Dead? Of course, we show it to you, we put videos in English that make it difficult for you to understand them, so many times they don't even enjoy them, and everything so that later don't have someone to speak that language with.
Well, this is how I feel, that two years ago I did an English course that cost me what I had to move forward, that I barely had time, and everything I learned seems to have vanished because, who the hell do I chatter with? spanglish?
While it's fun ...
So if you are a father or mother and you are considering that your children receive English classes, be sure that you really need to learn that they speak a lot in that language and that they have the possibility to speak a lot in that language too (and one in class, normally, can't talk much, because the teachers don't let you). If it is to receive one or two hours of English a week, then look, while it is a game and fun, go ahead, but it is two hours that could well be devoted to something else perhaps more productive or more fun.
