"The secret of reading"

In his article titled "The secret of reading", Philip Prowse treats the benefits of extensive reading, which means reading for pleasure as much as possible, and illustrates his opinion with a couple research studies that were carried out on this subject.

The first source he mentions is the review written by Stephen Krashen, where he summarizes different studies on the benefits of reading when learning a first language, a mother tongue. The results of these researches show that 93% of those who just read did better than the ones who received traditional reading comprehension lessons, which makes a lot of sense if you think about it because when students are forced to read and lack interest they tend to avoid it as much as they possibly can whereas the ones who actually enjoy reading show a great motivation towards it and they keep on reading whenever they find the time and, therefore, they also keep improving in their language skills.

Even though this specific research was focused on a first language acquisition, the situation is pretty much the same when trying to learn a foreign language.

For instance, In Fiji, some studies on Primary school pupils portray that the results of the students who read for pleasure just for 20-30 minutes a day and the ones who discussed the books with the teacher clearly outdid the results of the rest of the class in the three major categories that are typically tested at schools: reading comprehension, writing and grammar. And the same happened in a similar study carried out in Singapore, where the kids in the experimental classes who were encouraged to read also got better results at every single language skill as well as learning the language faster than the rest.

Prowse also mentions an important project that was done at the Secondary school stage: the project PASSES. For this experiment, 40 of the weakest schools in the country were taken into consideration and each of them followed the same program for 5 years: apart from using the school textbooks, the children read for 20 minutes a day, had an extensive reading lesson per week and also talked about the books they read, books that they could take home to read on their own, in their own free time and at their own pace. After these 5 years, the language level of these schools was assessed to discover that they were no longer so weak, but that their results were actually higher than the national average. Thanks to reading, pupils were able to widen their vocabulary, improve their grammar and increase their fluency in speaking.

Finally, in relation to adult learners, Prowse points out a study based on L1 vocabulary acquisition called “Clockwork Orange Study”. This experiment consisted on having some adults read a copy of the novel “A Clockwork Orange” in order to take a comprehension test and perform a literary discussion afterwards. However, instead of that, the test was actually a vocabulary test on the invented slang called “nadsat” that can be found in the book. The average grade of these tests was a 76%, which proves that these adults had learnt a great amount of new words only by context and without any effort.

It is also explained that others have tried to replicate this experiment in the context of foreign language acquisition although the results have not been as successful. Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that we have all learnt new vocabulary at some extent just by reading, which means that, even though the results are not the same as in the context of first language learning, reading is still a good way to improve our lexicon.

After explaining the success of the previous researches, Prowse presents the following dilemma: how can we, as teachers, make our students read in English especially when they don’t even do it in their own mother tongue?

It is evident that the best way of improving their level of English is having them read as many books as possible and the first think that must be taken into account for this purpose is motivation. Students need to understand the benefits of reading and we have to encourage them to take books home to read calmly.

Besides, they should be able to choose what to read in order to make sure that the experience would be pleasant and exciting. It doesn’t really matter if the level of the book is above the student’s ability because they would always enjoy reading it if they like its genre or its story. However, if kids are given a book they hate, they would find the experience tedious even if the level of the book is suitable with their linguistic skills.

To help them choose a suitable book, Prowse proposed for them to read the title and the back of the book in order to identify the kind of book and to see if the plot can be interesting for them or not. Another strategy I believe they can use is to search on the internet for different books of their favourite genre and also look at the plot to make sure they can enjoy it. Moreover, it is important to let students know that, if they don’t like the book they have chosen, they can leave it and choose another one without any repercussions.

The author of this article also puts forward the idea of a class library, which I find very interesting. Having several books at school to choose from facilitates the reading task to the students because they don’t need to waste their time at the library looking for a suitable book. Bringing some options to class saves lots of time. Moreover, they can always ask their classmates about which books they have enjoyed the most and these recommendations will always be more useful than a teacher’s suggestion because classmates are more likely to share interest for the same books. Prowse’s advice is to put a card inside the books so that children can write brief comments about each of them or to use opinion forms and have the students rate the books with grades from 1 to 5.

Both ideas are excellent to have everyone’s opinion in paper and at hand at all times but, knowing that students don’t usually like to write about the books, I believe that an activity that can be quite beneficial is a class discussion. For a while in class, the students who like the same genres can join and create discussion groups to share their opinions and recommendations with their peers. I think this would be a more dynamic and much more communicative way to collect information about the books.

And what are the things that mustn’t be done if we really want to encourage reading?

First of all, it is important not to allow the use of dictionaries. The new vocabulary that children may encounter is often repeated along the book and they need to try to deduce the meaning by the context, since it’s the best way of acquiring new vocabulary. If they interrupt the story to look for the meaning of a word, they can easily forget wat was happening and that would be counterproductive. What I would do as student to avoid the use of dictionaries is to underline the new vocabulary and try to guess its meaning through the context of the story but, if that is not enough, I would wait until I finished the whole book to look for those new words at the dictionary. 

Previously we referred to the fact that students don’t like to write summaries about the books and, in the same way, they hate being tested about them. If they know they have to do an exam or a test after finishing a book, they certainly won’t feel the urge to read again. They need to read for pleasure, and any kind of pressure (including reading aloud in front of the entice class) just stands in the way of that. Anyway, we will be able to see a quick progress in the English language from those who actually read many books.

After reading this article, we come to the conclusion that “reading is a matter of enjoyment”, as the author says. Our role as teacher is merely to offer students a wide selection of books to choose from in order to facilitate their access to reading but, after that, we must get out of their way and let them read at their own pace and with no pressures because, otherwise, we will only discourage them from keeping on reading.

Comparing opinions about reading

After reading my classmates’ blogs, I have seen that the situations we encountered were quite similar.

To begin with, we apparently started reading in English pretty late and it wasn’t a very pleasant activity for any of us.

Lorena mentioned that, as me, she couldn’t choose the books to read and that most of the time she didn’t like the books chosen by the teacher because she found them uninteresting. Similarly, Beatriz found these compulsory readings rather long and boring and, besides, she needed to turn to the dictionary pretty often in order to check the meaning of many unknown words to be able to do the typical summarizing tasks that every school asked the students.

These tasks are not motivating for the students and the challenge of new vocabulary can become really frustrating too. In contrast to these exercises, Beatriz explains how well storytelling works for her daughter and how much she loves it.

As a teacher, I use storytelling every day and I have been able to see that kids love it because the stories are adapted to their age and deal with situations they can feel identified with. Both Lorena and Beatriz have used this methodology in their teaching too and I believe we can all say that, by means of repetition and visual aids, kids rapidly integrate new vocabulary and basic structures in their foreign language knowledge.

Reading as a source of language learning

I believe that we can all agree on the fact that, when learning a foreign language, reading has an essential role even though sometimes it may be difficult to apply it.

From my experience as a learner, I remember that there wasn’t too much reading at school. In Catalan and Spanish lessons there were several reading comprehension exercises and another important task that students had to carry out was done over the summer holidays, when we had to read and summarize a book. It wasn’t until secondary school that we started to do the same with English books. Before that moment, English summer homework was based more on grammatical aspects.

Besides, students never got the chance to choose a book because all the books were chosen by the teachers. I understand the advantages of this method from a teacher’s point of view, since it’s easier for them to check and grade a summary from a book they know rather than coming across numerous unknown titles. However, not every person is interested in the same genres of book and more often than not students found these books uninteresting and the tasks boring.

It was still somehow useful because it helped me learn some vocabulary, but if I had been given books that I could find appealing I would have been more prompt to reading, would have paid much more attention to the text and would have taken much more benefit from it. That is why it is very important that students find the plot interesting, otherwise the experience is not as profitable as it could be.

In my teaching practice at a private English school, I have worked with children from the ages of 3 to 10 and storytelling has always been very present. Since it’s a private school which tries to teach English in a natural way rather that in a traditional and grammatical-based methodology, it has its own storybooks and we don’t use other texts sources.

With very young kids I tell them stories using an illustration book. Since they can’t read yet, they just look at the pictures while they listen to me. The stories are obviously adapted to their age and the experiences they may live at that age and they love to listen to the stories over and over again. This repetition helps them learn new vocabulary and structures in a delightful way as well as becoming more aware of the correct pronunciation of the language.

Once the kids are older and able to read themselves, each of them is given a storybook so that they can practice home on their own. This way they can also improve their spelling because they can see every word written down.

Nevertheless, I believe that it is significant for students to be in contact with a variety of texts so that they can make the most of the reading experience. And, as teacher, we can give them a list of books they may enjoy but we should also give them the chance to choose what books to read. This way they will probably enjoy them more and we will also teach them to be more responsible and mature.

BELIEFS ON LANGUAGE LEARNING

Diary entry #3

When talking about language learning, there are some myths or widespread beliefs amongst society about what is the best way of achieving a good level of a foreign language, and the main ones are all related to its early introduction.

Over the last years, the belief that kids should start learning a foreign language as soon as possible has been supported by many parents and also by many educators. But, how real is that assumption?

First of all, we need to distinguish the traditional or formal settings in which languages are taught at schools from the natural method by which we acquire our first language.

When we are born, we receive a massive and constant input of our mother tongue. We are totally immersed in it and that is why in the long term we achieve a level of proficiency in that specific language with high levels of phonetics and pronunciation. However, the way we learn a foreign language at school is entirely different.

To begin with, the input of that foreign language is limited and extremely reduced in comparison to the one of our mother tongue and, besides, schools tend to focus on the grammatical aspects of the language instead of teaching it in a truly communicative way.

The schools way of teaching foreign languages requires a high level of maturity and cognitive strategies which young children lack. When kids are older, their brain is more structured and it allows them to make interconnections between concepts, to find synonyms and even to relate languages because their level of their mother tongue is also higher. It is then when they can understand and learn grammatical rules as well as better perform at written tests, since they own more learning skills.

Therefore, it is true that to achieve a proficient level of a language, the sooner we start the better, but this statement only applies to naturalistic methods where we achieve foreign languages as we did with our mother tongue. Children may be like sponges if they learn languages in a natural way because they are curious and prompt to take risks and the high input or exposure to the language makes learning easier, but this early introduction will never work within the formal settings of school teachings because they don’t have the resources to progress as it is commonly expected.

Another assumption about the benefits of starting early is the factor of motivation. People believe that young kids are more motivated, but that is not true. As time goes by, the elements that stimulate students tend to change but it doesn’t mean that they become discouraged about learning. Preschool and primary students may be aroused by games, songs and stories but teenage students are more aware of the importance of foreign languages and the opportunities they bring, such as travelling and meeting new people, and those perspectives can really inspire them to keep working hard. Motivation may change, but it doesn’t disappear.

Last but not least, we find a preoccupation amongst some parent that an early introduction of a foreign language might negatively affect the native language (or languages, in cases like Cataluña or the Basque country) of their children, but that worry is absolutely irrational because no studies have given prove of the existence of that issue.

Firstly, the mother tongue is constantly present on a child’s life wherever they go which makes it impossible for the language to be forgotten or ignored. Moreover, research has been carried out about this topic and several studies have shown that bilingual children actually achieve higher scores in addition to many other benefits. Bilingualism allows people to concentrate more easily in problem-solving tasks, improves memory skills and has proven to delay the symptoms of dementia, but the list goes on and on.

Consequently, we can state that the early introduction of a foreign language can definitely be positive especially in natural circumstances, although not so much in the formal environments of schools. It is essential to keep bilingualism at schools because it brings countless advantages to the children but starting too early in those contexts doesn’t necessarily lead to a higher proficiency level of the language since kids need some specific strategies to learn it, strategies that they will not obtain until they reach a certain age.

TEACHING DIFFERENT LANGUAGES IN A PARTICULAR SCHOOL

Diary entry #2

In this post I will try to portray how languages are taught in the school “Sagrada Família” in the district of Sant Andreu de Palomar, a school that goes prom pre-school to the A levels also known as “bachillerato”.

Pre-school

At pre-primary level, when kids are between 3 and 5 years old, the lessons are mainly developed in Catalan but the use of the English language is already introduced.

Some trips and events are held both in Catalan and Spanish and the school also dedicates one morning of each school year to present a theatre play in English for the kids: “Georgina and the dragon”.

Primary school

First of all, let’s see the presence of Catalan and Spanish, which slightly fluctuates depending on the academic year.

Year of primary school	Catalan	Spanish
1st year	5 hours a week	2 hours a week
2nd year	4 hours a week	3 hours a week
3rd year	2 hours a week	4 hours a week
4th year	3 hours a week	3 hours a week
5th year	4 hours a week	2 hours a week
6th year	4 hours a week	3 hours a week

As we can observe on the table, the combination of both official languages teaching sums up a total of 6 or 7 hours a week, depending on the year. In terms of foreign languages, only English is taught during this academic period.

During the 1^st and 2^nd year of primary school, students have English lessons for 2 hours a week. The last 4 years of this academic period, they receive 3 hours a week of English, which means that when it comes to teaching English language as a subject the total of hours this language is taught is very much the same to Catalan and Spanish languages, although it is yet not enough.

Students receive constant input in Spanish and Catalan, not only at school but also at home and in the street whilst the input they receive of English is quite reduced. For this reason, the “Sagrada Família” school introduces CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) and starts teaching non-linguistic subjects in English.

Pupils start studying Visual Arts in English during the two initial years of primary school, leading to an average of 4 hours of English a week, and afterwards the same is done with Sciences, reaching a total of 7 hours a week.

Moreover, at this stage the centre also celebrates Halloween (bringing kids closer to a different culture) and it keeps providing them with theatre plays as well as with workshops in English.

Secondary school

When kids reach secondary school, English keeps on being the most important foreign language and it is taught for 3 hours a week, the exact same time as Catalan and Spanish.

Nevertheless, at the very beginning of secondary school, German is introduced as a compulsory subject for 2 hours a week. During the whole phase of secondary education, students also watch a film in English and another one in German every year.

Later on, at the 3^rd year of secondary school, the centre also introduces French, but this time as an optional subject. It is also the one and only time students can watch a film in French during the whole secondary school period.

We can clearly observe that the handling of foreign languages teaching focus its interest in the English language and, in terms of CLIL, the school still offers a couple subjects in English: Physical Education and statistics workshop.

Last but not least, the “Sagrada Familia” school puts forward a quite fascinating activity that goes from secondary school to the A levels: the linguistic voluntary service. Through this voluntary work, students from secondary school and the A levels can help primary school students with their English or they can do the same with Catalan to assist immigrant students with their oral expression.

A levels (“bachillerato”)

The A levels is the final stage in the educative system before accessing the university.

During these 2 years of high school, German and French remain present in the curriculum along with Catalan, Spanish and English.

This is the time the school dedicates to languages teaching every week, showing a slightly bigger presence of the English language in comparison to the rest:

	1st year	2nd year
Catalan language and literature	2 h	2 h
Spanish language and literature	2 h	2 h
English language	3 h	3 h
German language	2 h	2 h
French language	2 h	2 h

The same way it was done during secondary school, every year students watch a film in each of the foreign languages: 1 in English, 1 in French and 1 in German. Besides, different workshops are held, although they tend to be in English as the following chart illustrates:

	1st year	2nd year
Religion in English workshop	-	1 h
“e PROJECT” workshop	1 h	-
“official oral exams preparation” workshop	-	1 h
French workshop	1 h	1 h
German workshop	1 h	1 h

Besides the linguistic voluntary service previously mentioned, 2 trips are organized the last year of the A levels:

• For the scientific-technological modality: a trip to Switzerland
• For the social and humanistic modality: a trip to Rome

Escola d’Idiomes Sagrada Família

The school also offers a programme designed to provide students with 2 additional hours of English or German every week.

Kids can start these extra-curricular classes at the beginning of primary education, with the exception of English lessons, which can start during the last year of pre-school (P5).

The main goal of these classes, at least the English ones, is to develop the listening and oral abilities of the students. They don’t seek to introduce new grammatical concepts but to promote communicative skills through different projects and tasks.

This programme also offer English conversation classes for adults with a mid-level of the language.

Conclusion

It seems that we can definitely state that plurilingualism is not properly handled at schools since only a couple foreign languages are taught throughout the whole academic system, completely ignoring the promotion of tolerance towards linguistic differences and the appreciation of languages that multilingualism tries to develop.

In most of the schools in Cataluña, the languages and the cultures of the immigrant students are usually ignored and the main goal is to promote the languages of the territory as well as English due to its globalised significance, which can lead to learning difficulties given the fact that immigrant students may don’t understand the contents properly as they are taught in a dominant language which is not their mother tongue.

Besides, the English language is typically taught from a monoglossic point of view, as a separate monolingual system based on grammatical aspects, which proves that languages are not interrelated at schools when it comes to their instruction. There is just a small exception that shows some sort of heteroglossic bilingual education where a couple of subjects incorporate the language as a means of communication to teach its contents following the immersion principles of CLIL.

I believe it is of great importance to get closer to the different languages and cultures that can be found within a school’s walls in order to promote understanding and diversity amongst society. For this reason, following the example of the linguistic voluntary service, maybe some activities could be arranged to get closer to the immigrants’ cultures and open the children’s minds to other realities.

REFLECTION ON KIM POTOWSKI'S VIDEO: "No child left monolingual"

VIDEO: No child left monolingual

In this video, Kim Potowski tries to encourage multilingualism and talks about the bilingual situation in the USA’s academic system.

She centres her speech on immigration to illustrate how immigrant languages are treated in the American territory and uses her own experience to make her point.

Her grandparents were immigrants from Lithuania and had to learn English to survive in their new country, becoming therefore bilingual. However, their offspring received a much bigger input of English since it was used at school and everywhere outside their home. Consequently, the English language completely substituted their mother tongue and the next generations never used it or learnt it.

Another influence to this phenomenon of language loss is the fact that schools only focused on English and didn’t teach immigrant languages. Fortunately, this situation is changing little by little nowadays, but Kim Potowski remarks that “we still have a long way to go”. She mentions that the USA doesn’t encourage heritage languages enough and American people don’t usually make the effort of learning a non-English language, probably because they don’t feel the need for it. Using her own words, America “exhibits and promotes monolingualism in English”.

Nevertheless, the situation is not as terrible as it may seem. Schools are currently more aware of the different languages that can be found within its walls in the present, and that is why several of them are becoming bilingual in order to promote linguistic diversity. In the end, by promoting the heritage languages of immigrants, the nation can learn to communicate in different languages and it can lead to numerous advantages, not only in communicative terms but also in relation to global commerce for example.

As Kim Potowski explains, research has proven that bilingual lessons help immigrants to learn English. If they are given 100% English lessons, they don’t understand the explanations as well as they should and they fall behind. Through bilingualism and two-immersion programmes, they receive the important instructions in their first language and it helps them improve much faster because they understand what is being explained and what they are supposed to do.

Even parents who are monolingual in English are trying to make their children learn a new language or even more than one. The problem is that, typically, kids start learning a new language in high school at the age of 14 approximately and that is way too late.

Cognitive research discovered that different parts of the brain are used at language learning before and after the age of 8, which is commonly known as organic memory. That is why two-immersion programmes are important as well as starting language learning in kindergarten, always through programmes based on meaningful content.

Schools and society need to integrate all languages, foster heritage languages because bilingualism has proven to have numerous advantages. It improves problem solving skills, delays dementia or Alzheimer about 10 years and also promotes better acquisition of a 3rd or 4th language. And these are just a few examples of its benefits.

In Spain, the situation is not so different from that of the USA: English acquisition has become highly important and not much attention is being given to other languages.

Society is aware of the importance of English around the world, and that is why nowadays English teaching starts at Pre-primary. It is not until high school that students start learning French or German, which means that in the previous stages of the educative system only English is taught as a foreign language.

Kim Potowski talks about the importance of starting language acquisition at a young age and using meaningful contents as well as promoting two-immersion programmes to promote better acquisition of the foreign language. Here in Barcelona, the educational system seems to agree with her especially on the first two aspects.

People are aware of the high abilities kids have to learn a language when they are young, and parents want their children to start learning as soon as possible. For this reason, English teaching in schools starts when pupils are 3 years old and several private centres develop English lessons even for babies.

Besides, in order to use meaningful contents, schools started integrating CLIL a few years ago. This way they use the language as a tool to teach another subject instead of focussing on grammatical aspects and this new method has proven to be quite effective regarding English acquisition.

However, as was mentioned previously, foreign language teaching focuses basically on English and doesn’t integrate or foster other languages, which I believe should change. I’m not saying it is easy because it definitely isn’t, but schools should promote plurilingualism as well as the acceptance and fostering of different cultures and languages.

In the end, we live in a world in which many different cultures coexist within a same territory and they shouldn’t be undermined or excluded, because that is just a sign of intolerance.

REFLECTION ON "30 MINUTS": English language in Catalan society and education

VIDEO: Do you speak English?

Nowadays, we live in a globalized world and English has become a lingua franca, a common language amongst the different countries to allow communication.

After the Second World War, American companies started to grow and flourish and English became the language used for commercial purposes.

With tourism increase and international businesses, English has been found essential for companies to communicate with their clients. However, even though English has been taught at schools for more than 3 decades, employers still find it very difficult to find personnel with a good English level.

According to a research carried out by the European Union, only 25% of the teenager population between 14 and 16 years old are able to use English correctly in comparison to Sweden, where more than the 80% of the students proved to have great competences in the language. What is the explanation for this low level of competences in English?

I believe that the main explanation lays in the educational system.

English lessons follow the traditional method based on grammar, but this method doesn’t promote comprehension and expression in English. It doesn’t focus on actual communication, and the only way of learning a language is by using it.

My experience teaching English as a foreign language has shown me that language immersion plays a decisive role, especially at young ages. Contact with English promotes a better comprehension of the language and makes its use easier for the speakers. It allows learning in a more natural way because, in the end, at young ages it’s easier to make connections in the brain.

Unfortunately, in Cataluña, this contact with the English language is very low. English teachers speak Spanish in class, which means that students are not exposed to this foreign language appropriately. Also, the movies are dubbed instead of subtitled, which reduces drastically the population’s exposure to the English language.

We should make an effort to get more in touch with the English language at every stage, starting with the education sphere by focusing less on grammar and more in meaningful contents or by supporting the initiative of teaching subjects like Maths or Science through English, because only by perceiving a language and by using it we can actually learn it appropriately.

MULTILINGUALISM

Diary entry #1

Multilingualism is the ability of an individual or a community of speakers to use more than one language. This post will try to reflect the monolingual situation in the city of Barcelona.

Immigration has been one of the major causes of multilingualism since it implied a greater and expanding exposure to different languages.

For instance, in Barcelona, if we compare the foreign population data from 2007 and 2017 we will be able to see that this population increased from 15.42% to 17.58% in a matter of 10 years, according to the data provided by Idescat (Instituto de Estadística de Cataluña). This percentage increase of 2.16% may not be very high but it is definitely significant.

Barcelona’s immigrant habitants come from every country in the world, each of which has its own mother tongue, and that causes the cohabitation of a wide range of different languages within the same territory.

This means that, for example, a family from Africa who speaks Arabic as their mother tongue will be exposed to at least 2 more languages which are Spanish and Catalan, the official languages of the land. However, if they have contact with families from Italy, China, Sweden or any other country they will also be exposed to these other languages, probably.

Idescat shows that in 2017, most of the immigrants came to Barcelona from 5 main countries: Italy, China, Pakistan, France and Morocco. These 5 countries have completely different languages but they all cohabitate in schools with the official languages of the territory (Spanish and Catalan) as well as with hundreds more although, unfortunately, not much attention is paid to them in academic terms because the language policies created by the European Union to support multilingualism do not include the languages of the immigrants (Baetens, 2009).

Another important cause of multilingualism is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL).

The CEFRL was published by the Council of Europe to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and it states that all citizens in Europe should have the right to learn at least 2 foreign languages. This is the reason why schools in Barcelona teach English and another foreign language such as German or French.

Nevertheless, Barcelona is not the only place where English is taught as a foreign language. English has grown into a lingua franca, a common language used around the world to communicate and its learning has become essential everywhere. But why English? Let’s begin with an image.

The red countries represent the areas invaded by Britain, which gives us an idea of why the English presence is so wide. In the end, this language was necessary to carry out trading activities and businesses around the world and that situation fostered its growth.

In addition to that, it is important to take into account how the USA influence expanded after the Second World War. American companies started to grow and flourish and English became again the language used for commercial purposes, causing that schools all over Europe started teaching English as a foreign language.

Consequently, different initiatives have developed over the last decades in order to promote a better acquisition of the English language.

One of the main ones is CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), which consists on teaching different school subjects such as Maths, Science, History, etc. using the English language. Instead of basing the lessons on memorizing grammatical rules, this method uses language as a tool or a means of communication to teach meaningful contents, which has proven to be rather efficient.

Another initiative which has gained importance lately is starting the acquisition of English as soon as possible, since there is a generalized belief that students will have a better chance of learning a new language the sooner they start getting familiar with it (Prats, 2014).

For this purpose, schools have started to introduce English at Pre-primary education and several private centres have emerged with methodologies that apply to very young children, even babies. These private centres follow the ideas of natural learning and language immersion and focus on fostering the students’ oral comprehension.

I myself work in one of these schools and I have witnessed how efficient these methods are. When we are born, the way we learn how to speak our own mother tongue is by being exposed to it constantly, even if we don’t pay attention to the conversations. It is through listening that we acquire a language and become able to use it, even though being totally unaware of any grammatical rules. When we start learning our first language’s grammar at school we have already developed our ability to speak that language.

This natural learning is what these schools try to imitate. They provide students with a wide range of stimulus in English to start building their knowledge through context, as we do with our mother tongue. Of course, grammar is necessarily taught later when they are old enough to assure understanding and efficient use of grammatical rules, but when students reach this stage of their learning process they already have a solid base of comprehension and expression in the English language.

We can definitely state that for various reasons English is now the global language which allows communication throughout the continents and brings every country closer to each other. That is why so many efforts keep on being made with the purpose of promoting the language, because in the end it represents and ideal of hope for a better future, a future in which we will be able to reach all the different cultures in the planet, learn from them and create a better world based on communication, understanding, respect and peace.