Why teach this not that?

Why are schools teaching French at KS1 in England when it is not a part of the compulsory curriculum?

As we see with children who are brought up in multi-lingual environments, learning more than one language in their early years is not difficult. The children distinguish one language from another as readily as they distinguish language from music.

Indeed, learning a foreign language sooner rather than later has a great benefit, not least because young children’s brains are at their most elastic in their early years. This allows them to form neural connections more rapidly during what is often called “the critical period” of learning.

It has been shown that learning another language improves the children’s performance in other areas of the curriculum as well as enhancing brain function and improving memory.

Thus, children who start to learn a foreign language sooner rather than later gain a benefit that lasts them forever, rather than having just a bit of a head start. For at this time, all their language learning proceeds at a faster speed and is retained more readily.

Indeed, should they later decide to take on a third language later in life, they will immediately find that the early learning of French once more gives them an unbridled head start.

This, of course, explains why a growing number of schools are opting to teach French at Key Stage 1, combining the benefit that naturally arises from the early learning of a second language, alongside the type of activities, games and resources that are associated with Key Stage 1 learning.

Better still, such teaching can readily be undertaken by non-specialists through the use of PowerPoints and audio files in a multi-sensory manner.

Because of this, the book “French is Fun at Key Stage 1” is particularly designed for non-specialist teachers with supporting material supplied with the book on a USB drive.  

As an extra incentive, for the rest of June we are offering a 20% discount on this volume via the code “brilliant22”.

You can read more about the resource, on our website:

https://brilliantpublications.co.uk/product/french-is-fun-at-key-stage-1/

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