Some experts believe that it is better for children to begin learning a foreign language at primary school rather than secondary school.
Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
One of the popular debates today is whether children should start learning a new language at primary or secondary education. I believe that learning a foreign language should start as early as primary school and argue that the positive outcomes out shadow the negative ones.
One of the main advantages is that children at the younger age tend to learn a new language easier than teenagers. This is because younger kids are natural language acquirers and they are self-motivated to pick up language without conscious learning, unlike teenagers. Studies have found that young children have greater brain plasticity that equips them with the ability to imitate pronunciation and figure out rules of a language for themselves. If foreign language lesson begins at secondary education, most students may struggle to master a language as they may have lost the enthusiasm. This is usually the case when the language lessons are delivered through an academic setting using textbooks.
Furthermore, primary school normally have a more flexible schedule and the subjects are also simpler than those at the secondary school. This allows more time to fit in language lessons through play-based approaches, such as singing, watching movies, lots of interactive activities that will help children engaged in the learning process. For secondary education, the subjects are more advanced and normally there is little time for such language classes, hence the starting a new language at that stage may not be suitable.
One of the drawbacks of implementing the policy in primary education is that there is lack of the specialist language teachers as most teachers in the primary school are generalists, therefore the outcome may be as effective. In addition, if the teaching of the foreign language at primary education is not well-planned or standardised, it will be difficult to track the learning progress and the language foundation may not be well-established. This will further affect learning process of the children when they move on to secondary school.
In conclusion, with points discussed above, I am convinced that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, furthermore, hence, if, may, second, so, therefore, thus, well, in addition, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 13.1623246493 137% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 7.85571142285 127% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 10.4138276553 77% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 7.30460921844 151% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 24.0651302605 91% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 41.998997996 90% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 8.3376753507 96% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1830.0 1615.20841683 113% => OK
No of words: 340.0 315.596192385 108% => OK
Chars per words: 5.38235294118 5.12529762239 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.29407602571 4.20363070211 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.93613685886 2.80592935109 105% => OK
Unique words: 169.0 176.041082164 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.497058823529 0.561755894193 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 569.7 506.74238477 112% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.60771543086 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 5.43587174349 129% => OK
Article: 1.0 2.52805611222 40% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.10420841683 95% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 0.809619238477 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.76152304609 63% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 16.0721442886 87% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 20.2975951904 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.1034037024 49.4020404114 83% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.714285714 106.682146367 123% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2857142857 20.7667163134 117% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.5 7.06120827912 106% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.38176352705 114% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.01903807615 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.67935871743 115% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 3.9879759519 50% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 3.4128256513 59% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.316677596084 0.244688304435 129% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.117817725957 0.084324248473 140% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.047684916499 0.0667982634062 71% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.171992572583 0.151304729494 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0591656299282 0.056905535591 104% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.1 13.0946893788 123% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 50.2224549098 77% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.44779559118 118% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 11.3001002004 122% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.22 12.4159519038 115% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.91 8.58950901804 104% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 78.4519038076 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 9.78957915832 112% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 10.1190380762 115% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 10.7795591182 83% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 67.4157303371 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 6.0 Out of 9
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.