Some experts believe that it is better for children to begin learning a foreign language at primary school rather than secondary school. Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?

Answer:

Learning new languages has always been an important part of everyones education. Yet the right age to start such learning is still debatable. Some people argue that learning languages better begin at older ages as children reach secondary school. However, learning new languages at younger ages starting at primary school seems to be also beneficial in many ways.

On one hand, starting learning new languages at younger ages do not give the child the opportunity to choose properly which language to choose to study, as they still do not have a clear prospective of what language might they need in their future. Moreover, younger children might not be able to digest some of the complex aspects of these languages such as grammatical rules which can barely be understood by older students.

On the other hand, it is known that learning process works faster and new information lasts longer if learnt at younger ages. Young children may even have the ability to learn more than one foreign language at the same period. Furthermore, studying languages at younger ages gives children the time to practice as they grow up. Syrian students, for example, who started studying English at primary school, proved to be superior to their peers in English language at secondary school.

To sum up, although learning new languages at primary school has its negative points, yet those points are still outnumbered by the positive ones. That is why learning foreign languages should be encouraged as it carries more benefit and efficacy than of it at secondary school.

Comments/Feedback:

Thesis statement? How does the introduction help the reader? TA – the ideas put forward are weak (examiners are language teachers) & it is not clear why you come to a particular conclusion. Do the disadvantages actually outweigh the disadvantages? How does the reader know? Enough examples?// CC – I suppose there are 4 paragraphs. There is no spacing. 2 sentences in para 2? Yet, there is a flow// LR – there i s plenty of collocation and all the vocabulary is relevant to the topic. But no doubt you can see there is lot of repetition of some phrases// G – have you proofread this? The only errors I can see are 2 in the introduction. Because of the repetition of vocabulary, the range of grammar patterns is quite limited// So, Id say: TA – 6// CC – 7 (just)// LR – 7 (prospective/perspective?)//G – 7 (might be 8 but wouldnt change the overall band score)// = 7.0.