Opinion piece – Early foreign language teaching: some critical remarks and some recommendations

Annick De Houwer
Erfurt

Dieser Beitrag ist eine kritische Beurteilung von Wert und Nutzen des Fremdsprachenunterrichts bei Grundschulkindern, gestützt auf Forschungsergebnisse des frühen Spracherwerbs. Dabei werden auch globale sprachpolitische Faktoren diskutiert. Der Beitrag schliesst mit Empfehlungen für eine gute Fremdsprachenlehrpraxis.

Parents and policy-makers in Europe are eager to expose children to foreign language teaching at a very early age. The goal of early foreign language teaching in Europe is to support foreign language learning and to create a multilingual population that ideally knows three languages (Eurydice/Eurostat, 2012). In many European countries foreign language teaching is now mandatory in primary school (ibidem). Parents invest a lot of effort and money in foreign language classes at the pre-school level as well.
With few exceptions the first foreign language that children in continental Europe are taught is English. French, German, Spanish and Russian follow at quite a distance (others trail behind even more; Eurydice/Eurostat, 2012). Languages are termed “foreign” if they are not used in the child’s immediate communicative environment outside school. […]