On CTV, (or CityTV, not entirely sure) I saw a particular commercial that bothered me immensely this afternoon. It was about these two children, around six to eight years old, speaking in fluent French while playing a chess game at the park. I wasn’t too focused on their conversation, but what I did pay attention to was the last thing I saw: the screen went white as those two kids disappeared into the white abyss and a phrase – around the lines of the importance of your child learning and speaking French – appeared, to my amusement, in fact.
Literally. I giggled. Aloud, even. Honestly, I think it’s ludicrous that these commercials funded by the government, most likely, are advertising the “importance” of French, and yet children can only start learning it at the age of eight or nine, give-or-take, and depending on the school region itself. It’s bullshit!
I appreciate the French language, I do. Heck, I’m even taking a second-year French speaking class at the University of Toronto for God’s sake! But even though I took French way back in Grade One of Elementary, (back when it was mandated so, and not like now in which French is introduced in Grade Four) I’m still having trouble speaking it, let alone understand it. I’m embarrassed to say that those six-year-old smart asses spoke better French than I EVER WILL, no matter how many university classes I take, or no matter how much I try to perfect my French pronunciation.
If French is so “important”, why introduce a new language later in life? Isn’t it bad enough that life is already complicated with a single language?
In psychology, I learned that a second language is best learned early. That is not to say, that an adolescent, adult, or elder cannot learn a new language, it is just that it is much easier and faster when one is relatively younger. I had forgotten what this theory, but thanks to HowStuffWorks, I know again. It’s the critical period hypothesis, which basically states that there’s “a window in which second language acquisition skills are at their peak”. Some researchers say that it ends by age 6 or 7, while others say that it lasts through puberty. EITHER WAY, once this critical period is over, it becomes much harder for a person to learn a new language. Why frustrate children into learning a new language so late? If it’s beneficial to learn early, why has the curriculum changed to postpone learning for roughly three years?
Yes, I know three years doesn’t seem like much of a difference, but trust me it does. At my sister’s age, who’s ten by the way, I could conjugate verbs in at least two tenses. I knew the basics – like colours, numbers – HANDS DOWN! I even understood simple questions in French: Comment t’appelle tu? Oui ou Non? Quelle est la date? And that was THREE years of learning.
I bet you anything my sister, who started French last year in Grade Four, doesn’t even know how to say her age in French.
Works Cited:
http://people.howstuffworks.com/best-age-learn-language.htm
The Real Michelle Monteiro 