Good Age to Start Learning English
There is a myth that young children are the best second
language learners. Probably that myth is
the reason why there are so many schools that teach English at an early stage
like in the 3rd grade of an elementary
school or even at kindegarten. However, is it really true that young children are the best
learners of second language? Let us compare the capability of learning a second language between children,
teenager, and adult.
Is childhood a good time to learn English
as a second language? The answer is no. According to Bloom’s taxonomy, children
whose age are from 4 up to 11 still need to develop their other skills which is
more important, three of the skills are cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. Cognitive,
is a skill that domain in knowledge and understanding, and for children it revolve
around basic knowledge and basic comprehension. Affective domain is describe
the way people react emotionally and how they manage their emotions, and children
are emotionally unstable and they need to train their emotion a lot. The last
is the psychomotor domain which is the ability to physically manipulate a tool
or an instrument, and children need to train their physical ability to give
perfection to their movement. Based on the explanation of the three skills
above, we know that learning second language is not one of the main skill
children should develop. Therefore, we could assume that childhood is not a
good time to learn English as a second language.
The best language learners are actually teenagers. There
are lots of factors that make teenagers as the best second language learners, three
of the most important factors are they have enough basic skills, they have
mastered their first language; and they know the importance of second language.
The most important fact is that teenagers already have enough basic skills in
affective, cognitive, and psychomotor skills. That is why if they start to
learn a second, language it will not distrub their basic skill development
and it actually help them to promote
their cognitive skill development. The second prominent thing is teenagers have
already mastered their first language or they mother language. When we teach a
second language to children who not mastered their first language yet , it will
distrub their language learning, and in most cases it will make them unable to
completely master both language. The last important factor is teenagers
awarenes of the second language. Most
teenagers have already know the importance of learning second language and they
areeager to learn another language. Compared to children who does not have a
strong reason to learn a second language, teenagers will have better resultat
learning second language because they have stronger reason to learn it. Based
on the fact above, we know that teenagers are the best learner of the second language because they are ready to
learn it.
How about adult capability in
learning a second language? Actually adult readiness in learning a second
language is as good as a teenager does. However, an adult is at a disadvantage
compared to teenager. There are few things that cause adult disadvantages, some
of them are time, facility, and memory.
Adult have less time to studying. They have lot more things to do, like working
for example. On the other hand, teenagers have more free time than adult does
and it give them more time to learn something such as another language. The other
difference is facility. Adults have less facility when they want to learn
another language. They have to learn it by themself or take a language class. As
for teenagers, they have more facilities. The most obvious one is school. They
can study another language at school with all of it facility, and if they want
more they, can take a class outside of school. Another difference is memorizing
capability. We are sure know that adult is having harder time in memorizing
something, and to learn another language they need to memorize lots of new
words and also new language structure.
Most adults will spend more time
to learn new language than teenager does. On the other hand, it is easier for teenagers
to learn a new language. Their ability to memorizing is better than adults does
and they spend less time to learn. Therefore, even though adults are as ready
as teenagers in learning a second language, teenagers still have more advantages
than adult and it is better to learn another language since teenage.
In conclusion, from the information above we learn that the
best time to learn a new language is at teens period.That is why, teaching a
second language should be started at junior high not on elementary school. It
is not wrong to teach a children a second language because most of the time they
will have a better native fluecy. However, we should not teach a second
language intensively to children because it may also distrub the development of
their first language.