In praise of early learning
I will start with a little bit of background. As some of you will know, I am part of the Primary Languages Network team, looking after administrative tasks. You may not know that I am Czech by birth and English is an additional language for me. I grew up in a family where Czech and Slovak were spoken. We would regularly watch German and Polish TV channels when growing up. There was never a notion that this was somehow strange or that you wouldn’t speak another language. Ok, maybe, my situation was particularly conducive but by no means exceptional.
Going to school, I soon began to learn Russian (we are in Iron curtained central Europe at this point after all) and later on, English (and a few others over the years). I have Masters degrees in English and Spanish and have worked in the field of early language acquisition.
My life has been shaped, to a great degree, by this access to languages opening travel, work and social opportunities that I wouldn’t otherwise have had. Including, my living in the UK.
But is that it? Is that what languages have been for me? What if your ambition and career path is totally different. Do you still benefit from language learning?
Undoubtedly. The sense of the world opening up in Czechoslovakia in the early 90th was immense but that is nothing compared to where we are now. In everyday life, social situations, let alone media, nations meet, culture mingle and our need for communication AND understanding is greater than ever. My daughter who’s interested in geo sciences is looking at learning and career opportunities all around the world and without a doubt, a more successful, well rounded life will be dependent on her being part of any community she chooses.
Consider, what actually is language? On the very basic level – it is an expression of our thoughts. Our individual, cognitive experience, translated and shared with the outside world. Through our social development, we learn the code. A code which is shaped by the people, their background and the circumstances they live in and that is what language actually is. Learning somebody else’s language, is learning about their way of thinking, their background, their circumstances.
What technology is doing for us these days is fantastic but that deep understanding and human connection will never be replaced. Nor, can technology keep up with the ‘alive’ nature of language. It changes, all the time to cope with society and life outside itself.
And, here’s the thing - did you ever stop to consider that what we ask of children through most of their school experience is actually learning languages? Expression of thought means marrying concepts with codes, be it for math, geography or computer science. And, we do that without opening their minds to the skills that make that learning explicit and easier. Enter, language teaching. Making language learning an important part of the primary, or even, early years curriculum is an amazing opportunity to help children adopt some of the key cognitive, learning and retention skills that will serve them well in all future learning: listening, having a go, seeing patterns, looking for similarities and making connections. It puts more weaponry into our creative arsenal. A good, effective language curriculum will point these skills out explicitly but just the exposure to another language and the sense of reward children get from completing a language learning task is huge. That’s because, at the end of it all, we are human beings who thrive on the human connection and the motivational impact of that is immeasurable, helping us imbed good learning habits. Language learning is a life skill, one that is both empowering and imperative for improving individual choices and a healthy society.