7

What is the best age to start?

What is the optimal age to start learning an additional language? Popular thinking, and much of
current educational policy (in Europe at least), suggests that the younger, the better. Everyone
has a story of a child who moved from one country to another and, lo and behold, was
speaking the local language within months, if not sooner. Why not capitalize on this apparently
effortless capacity, the thinking goes, and introduce a second language at primary school?

However, evidence is starting to emerge that casts some doubt on the wisdom of such a policy,
especially if its implementation involves only an hour or so of instruction a week. And an hour or
so a week seems to be the norm. Data from the European Commission’s Eurydice website
(http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/index_en.php) shows that the time devoted to
foreign language teaching in primary schools remains limited, in general less than ten percent of
total class time, and varies considerably between countries, not only in terms of the number of
hours, but also in terms of the starting age. For example, by Grade 7, children in Portugal will
have had just 162 hours (they start in Grade 5) while children in Bulgaria, who start in Grade 2,
will have had 343 hours. Spain is nearer the higher end, with 386 hours accumulated by the
time children are in Grade 7, but since they start in Grade 1, this represents, on average, only
64 hours a year.

The starting age in Spain has been the subject of an extended study, conducted under the
leadership of Carmen Muñoz of the University of Barcelona, and written up in an article in an
issue of Applied Linguistics (Muñoz 2008), as well as a book (Muñoz 2006). Muñoz points out
that a basic flaw in the argument supporting the introduction of English at primary is that
proponents of an early start base their case on the evidence of natural L2 acquisition, i.e.
where young learners are immersed in a second language, because (typically) they are the
children of immigrants. Muñoz argues that to extrapolate from these cases to the classroom
situation – where children are getting around two hours or less a week – is fundamentally
flawed.

An inferential leap has been made in the assumption that learning age will have the same effect
on learners in an immersion setting as on students of a foreign language, where the latter are
exposed to only one speaker of that language (the teacher) in only one setting (the classroom)
and for only limited amounts of time … However, recent studies conducted in foreign language
settings have clearly illustrated the role of input and exposure in the equation: an early start
leads to success but only provided that it is associated with enough significant exposure.
(Muñoz 2008: 591, emphasis in the original)

It’s difficult to see how – even with substantial training in classroom techniques that maximize
exposure and use – that any primary system that devotes only an hour or two to English a
week is going to make any noticeable difference, especially in classes of 20 or more children.
In fact, it may be just a waste of time and valuable resources.

And studies do indeed show that when learners who start at primary are compared with
learners who start in their early teens, the difference in attainment by the time they leave school
is negligible.

On the other hand, advocates of an early start – even if they accept the argument that
immersion-like conditions cannot be replicated in schools – still claim that an early start
predisposes children to foreign language learning, and thus has positive effects on their long-
term motivation. However, the evidence is not conclusive. Motivation was investigated in the
Barcelona study and it was found that, although there are positive effects for starting early,
they don’t persist – a trend found in studies in Hungary, Canada and the UK as well. Tragant
(2006: 239) sums up the evidence: ‘When FL (foreign language) instruction starts early in
primary school there seems to be a decline in the learners’ attitudes around the age of ten to
eleven; when most students start a foreign language or enter immersion programmes in
secondary school, their initial attitudes are positive but their interest soon wanes.’

This may, of course, have a lot to do with the kind of teaching the children are subject to. If
teachers are untrained in foreign language instruction for young learners, it’s unlikely that even
the small amount of time available will be used to best effect. This is especially the case if
instruction mimics the kind of teacher-fronted, transmissive, grammar-focused instruction that
characterizes language teaching at secondary and tertiary level. And a transmissive approach
is typically the default choice in large classes of (potentially) unruly children.
In the end, as Dörnyei (2009: 236) points out, ‘comprehensive discussion of the age issue is
never purely about age but also concerns a number of other important areas – quite frankly, we
would be hard pressed to find a potentially more complex theme in SLA than the issue of age
effects’. Among these other ‘important areas’ that Dörnyei alludes to are: the amount and type
of exposure; affective factors, including motivation and attitudes; children’s cognitive
development; first language support versus multilingualism; socioeconomic inequalities; teaching
methodology and teacher education; and the role and purpose of foreign language learning
within the broader remit of education in general.

Questions for discussion

1. What is the starting age in the public sector in your context? Does it seem to be working?

2. If the difference in success rates between an immersion setting and classroom instruction is
largely due to the amount of exposure that children get, how could this be increased (in the
school setting)? For example, is ‘content and language integrated learning’ (CLIL) a feasible
option?

3. How significant is the effect of the starting age on motivation, do you think?

4. Is there a viable alternative to a ‘teacher-fronted, transmissive, grammar-focused’

methodology for large classes of young learners? Or even for small ones?

5. Does it really matter that young learners don’t learn a lot of the foreign language they are
being taught? Isn’t there a broader educational objective at stake?

6. The move to introduce foreign languages earlier is partly propelled by the belief that there is
a critical age for language acquisition – hypothesized to be around the age of puberty – beyond
which learning second languages becomes increasingly hard. On the basis of your reading or
experience, do you think the Critical Age Hypothesis holds water?

7. Is English the victim of its own success, causing children to be pushed into learning it at
younger and younger ages?

8. To what extent does early foreign language teaching threaten the child’s mother tongue
development? Is this an argument against an early starting age?
References
Dörnyei, Z. (2009) The Psychology of Second Language Acquisition, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Eurydice Information Network on Education in Europe (2009) Key Data on Teaching Languages
at School in Europe 2009: at http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/about/eurydice/index_en.htm

Muñoz, C. (ed.) (2006) Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning, Bristol: Multilingual
Matters.

Muñoz, C. (2008) ‘Symmetries and asymmetries of age effects in naturalistic and instructed L2
learning’, Applied Linguistics, 29, 4.

Tragant, E. (2006) ‘Language learning motivation and age’, in Muñoz, C. (ed.) Age and the Rate
of Foreign Language Learning, Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

To see how readers responded to this topic online, go to

http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/a-is-for-age-of-onset/