Essay On “Study”

(Summary) The article talks about the difficulties that arise from trying to teach a foreign language to kindergarten students(1). The author provides details about certain issues that affect how well these students will be able to grasp any foreign language(2). One issue is that there is a lack of resources and qualified teachers to complete the job(3). Native language speakers are better at being able to teach the children the language, but the majority of foreign language teachers are not native speakers(4). Therefore, they lack the ability to be able to ease the children into being comfortable learning the language(5). Online resources are a problem because many times there are errors that require technical support(6). Other issues are a lack of motivation and time(7). If children are not motivated at home, then they will not care much for learning the language(8). Teachers also have to deal with teaching on a fixed schedule so new material may not be covered for days(9). A myth that the article debunked is that adolescences and adults are better at learning a new language than young children are(10).
(Response) The article speaks truth about the issues of teaching kindergarten students a foreign language(1). I believe one thing the author should mention is the toll it will take in creating a lesson for these children(2). For instance, teachers already have to get them prepared to read by teaching them ABCs and numbers(3). Teaching them a foreign language at that stage can be damaging(4). Another part of the article I agreed with was the issues with online resources(5). Rosetta Stone is the most common foreign language tool used, but can it will be incorporated into a kindergarten classroom setting(6)? The tool is used for individuals, so if it is taught as a group then one student may risk falling behind without being noticed(7). Also, time management would be hard since you would have to schedule it around food breaks, other lessons, and naptime(8). I believe it would be best to start teaching foreign languages in the 5th grade since many of the necessary basics will be out of the way(9). I also did not know that kindergarten children could not learn a foreign language as easily as people make it out to be(10). I see all these advertisements on different medias that show how young children soak up a new language, but this article has debunked that (11). It presents the real struggles when it comes to teaching them instead of looking at things on the surface(12). If someone really wants to teach their child a foreign language, then they should take the advice of the article and have a native speaker of that language teach them, it is what we do for English classes(13). The author provided a lot of supporting details to convince the readers about the issues surrounding foreign language kindergarten classes and it made me learn about the issues that theses teachers face(14).