[寫作班] 托福第16週 philJamy,2
: 2. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Children should
: begin learning a foreign language as soon as they start school. use
: specific reasons and examples to support your position.
I disagree that kids should learn a foreign language as they start
school. Children should learn with the material they are familiar
with, which is beneficial to learning. Otherwise, they may have difficulty
with the material, and even lose the interest.
Since most kids start school at the age of five or six, the materials that
are suitable for them are the ones they are familiar with. Children at this
development stage are not matured enough to have abstract thinking.
They can only learn things in the surroundings. Foreign language, by
definition, is a language which is less used compared to native language.
Studies show that the children who learn a foreign language at the age of
five doesn't have sufficiently superior performance in comparison with those
who start later after years. In other words, starting earlier doesn't
necessarily mean learning better.
Some say that language is a tool to connect with the world. So parents
want their children to learn foreign languages because they can have different
ways to see the world. I agree that children should have broader horizons.
But does being able to speak a language imply that the speaker possess
knowledge of the culture? Of course not! Many friends of mine can do pretty
well on English tests, but they don't even know what is different from India
and Indonesia.
On the opposite, if parents force their children to learn a material which
is not suitable for them, they might feel bored and resist to learn. As an
English teacher, I have met some students who have to go to croweded schools
after school everyday. Do they like English? Do they have better viewpoints
of the world because they learn English? Neither. All they feel about English
is tiring. I can see how disappointed they are to go to these crowded schools.
I am not to say that they cannot learn a foreign language. It is surely an
important tool to communicate in this global village. If we take a
closer look at the reason we want our kids to learn a foreign language,
we may find it not necessary for us to be so worried that we urge them to
learn one. After all, learning is most efficient when the time is right.
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