WIDESPREAD BELIEFS AMONG PARENTS, EDUCATORS AND OLDER STUDENTS + IMPACT OF BILINGUALISM ON ENGLISH AS AN L3

If we take into account the 4 Myths about the beliefs of teaching/learning English or a foreign language, there are lots of important facts and researches than can help us to make reflexions on this issue.

If you ask to parents, educators or old students about learning English as a foreign language, most of them get to the same affirmations (the 4 myths). Particularly, in my experience, I’ve always trust the four of them which doesn’t mean that I’ve change my opinion after all.

• The first one would be that very young children are more motivated than older ones. This fact is linked in that the methodologies used with young students are much more motivating. As the students are growing up, the way of teaching is formalized and could cause them to lose motivation. Usually the activities used to the very young students are games, song, storytelling, and acting out… which make them to enjoy and learn without noticing, unconsciously. And they see an immediate use of the language. But as they grow up, the activities change and the students find it more difficult and they have conscious that they are learning. They neither see much use of what they’ve learnt at the time they are learning it. They can see a future use of it but it’s not the same. So, may be if teachers would provide good strategies and methodologies to the older students, the motivation of them would increase.

• The second one would be that the early they start learning a foreign language, the better they learn. The Educational Law had been putting the age of starting a foreign language in lower groups of the Educational system. But this fact doesn’t shown good results at the end; there are still low results on the levels they reach. One of the first questions that parents ask when they go to visit a school on the Openings Door Day, is “at what level do you start teaching English?” They are very concern with this fact, and the educators also, because we try hard to provide an English session per week in the school. But the researches show something different which I agree. The school context of learning a foreign language has input and instructions limited. And the age and time has to be taken into account. It’s around the 8/9 years old that cognitive maturity of children is ready. They have more cognitive strategies. It’s also proved that later learners learn faster than early ones.

• The third one would be that Children are like sponges. Which is true in some way, but taking into account the limitation on the learning process referred about that input or the time of exposure to the languages it’s not enough. It is not the same to learn in a context of immersion that in a context limited in time and input as it would be in a school environment. As it’s said in the researches in Language acquisition. This opened my eyes about this fact which I agree now.

• The fourth one would be that Early introduction affect the other 2 languages. I would like to explain an anecdote that I lived a few years ago at a school that I worked on. The management team told me I would give class to the initial cycle but in an entirely oral way. I prepared the first session so I introduced a story/song “the wheels on the bus”. And a small worksheet, “dot to dot”, making the silhouette of a bus and where they had to write the word “BUS” at the end. That day, the management team asked me not to write anything, especially the word “BUS”, as it would create a linguistic conflict because they were still internalizing the Catalan phonological conscience. And the fact of writing a “U” that did not sound as “U” would confuse them. Nowadays there are lots of researches that prove that early introduction of English does not hinder the development of L1 or cognitive ability. And also that it does not have negative effects. So, I believed in that before my experience and I still agree with the researches results.

So, after all this reflections about learning English or a foreign language I could say that the most important things are The exposure (including both quantity and quality) and The Intensity (including time and age). And that the strategies used nowadays such are project work and CLIL (paying attention in both, contents and language) are good ways to help on the process which is going to be a slow one.

Therefore I live and work in Catalonia and the schools language is Catalan and Spanish, the English have become to a TLA (L3) which means that L1 is Catalan, L2 Spanish and English is learnt as a foreign language. Multilingualism has been one of the main characteristics in the Catalan Educational system. And the learning community of the Catalan schools have been always concerned about it showing a big increase at the latest years.

References, from the subject, I used:

CENOZ, JASONE , The University of the Basque Country, Spain and JESSNER, ULRIKE , University of Innsbruck, Austria. TEACHING ENGLISH AS A THIRD LANGUAGE, Chapter 11

CENOZ, JASONE ,  Universidad del País Vasco, EL APRENDIZAJE DEL INGLÉS DESDE EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL: EFECTOS COGNITIVOS, LINGÜÍSTICOS Y AFECTIVOS

CARME MUÑOZ, CARMEN PÉREZ, Mª LUZ CELAYA, TERESA NAVÉS, Mª ROSA TORRAS, ELSA TRAGANT and MIA VICTORI, Universitat de Barcelona, EN TORNO A LOS EFECTOS DE LA EDAD EN EL APRENDIZAJE ESCOLAR DE UNA LENGUA EXTRANJERA . [Internal Document of Research Group BCN-SLA]