I’ve taken some stuff Catharina wrote on the Forum about elementary TPRS to share with the group here:
Out of curiosity, I’ve looked into when and why schools choose to start foreign language study and have yet to hear a logical answer. Two prominent private schools in NYC did extensive research and came to the conclusion that FL classes were not efficient before 4th grade. How they came to that decision was not clear to me. Neither school had done research on TPRS.
I would disagree with their conclusions based on my experience after 9 years of teaching early elementary. With sound FL pedagogy little kids can greatly benefit from FL classes starting on day one. As an approximate guideline my students move on to 4th grade with a receptive word bank of +/- 250 words after 150 hours (typical FLEX setting of French 30minutes 2x/week).
The productive capacity differs from kid to kid. Some children start to speak spontaneously after a few hours (one word utterances, songs, greetings). After +/-100 hours I’ve noticed that many students start to talk, spontaneously expressing themselves with simple sentences, story retells, and ask questions within the limits of what they’ve acquired.
It takes so long to become fluent. For that reason alone we should start early.
All my kids are 101 beginners. I work in a typical setting for an elementary FL teacher: French-on-wheels, 60 minutes per week, no walls tables or chairs, crammed spaces, right before or after lunch, 30 second transition, and stress.
My comment:
What Catharina, who lives this work and is adept at it, is really saying above, what I hear, is that there are no programs that work for elementary foreign language education because the practitioners do not exist. In our community we know of a handful of such teachers – who can really reach very small children in authentic ways – but the general consensus is that kids can’t learn at those ages.
When can they learn then? I am convinced from reading other things by Catharina on the Forum about what she does that it is not that kids cannot learn languages at those really young ages, but that the teachers are not available.
Something must be done to alert people that at that level it’s not the kids who can’t learn but the teachers who can’t teach. They lack a vehicle to do so, and they aren’t looking for one. But they should, because it’s out there.