I have exciting news one and all! I’ve begun working for a local primary school, helping with the children’s English lessons. The school is what is known as an Anglia school which means that, quite uniquely, it starts to teach English from the lowest year group (Groep 1), which is around 4 years old – the same age for Reception in Britain. With a native English speaker (in this case, me) in the classes who will only talk English with them, the idea and hope is that their pronunciation of English can be as faultless as possible. Of course it is quite common knowledge that the younger you learn a language, the easier it is to pick it up, so to begin at such a young age – when you first go to school – will undoubtedly prove a massive positive for their language skills.
Something I have picked up already is how differently language is taught over here compared to in Britain. I remember when I was in French lessons effectively being given a script. As long as everybody else kept to that script, we had no problem; as soon as they diverted from it, that’s where the problems arose. Of course, this ends up being impractical in the real world where, in my case, French people had no idea what my script was. This ended up with the situation where by our GCSEs we could probably order at a restaurant and say greetings without any support, but anything more than that would be a struggle. I honestly feel that afer 5 years of learning a language, needing to use cue cards and the like for speaking exams, is not ideal to say the least. Language is one of the few subjects that really should be memorised because it should become a natural means of communicating with others – it’s not there to monologue or have pre-planned conversations with, but to discuss and talk spontaneously (which I eventually was taught in my A Levels).
This is what I have really enjoyed, already, with the school here. Obviously it’s early days, so they’re only doing the basics, but one of the key aspects that jumped out at me was how little they were writing and how much they were hearing and speaking English. This means that their focus was more wholly towards taking in the language itself. One exercise jumps out. The youngest group had just learned the basic colours, and to use these, they coloured in a cartoon butterfly; the teacher would then ask at random which colour a child had used (all in English). But they were learning other words by osmosis: “What colour is your butterfly’s head, hoofd?”, and “Use your second colour for the butterfly’s wings, vleugels“. In this way, by the third time the question had been asked, it could all be said in English without any worry of the child not understanding. Therefore, by the end of the lesson on colours, they had also learned “butterfly”, “head”, “wings”, “spots”, “body”, and much more.
Grammatical aspects came in much later, with the older group. I do think that we often over prioritise grammar when we learn a language – and this isn’t just a British thing. Naturally we want to sound as linguistically correct as possible, but fundamentally language is most about understanding. How many times will you hear someone, even a native speaker saying something like, “you was funny” or “she don’t eat that” (where it should be “were” and “doesn’t” respectively)? Regardless, we understand this. The grammar is incorrect and to an English speaking ear can sound odd, but this doesn’t decrease the ability to comprehend what has been said.
When I first started learning Dutch, this was something that I was advised to take into account. If, when you’re early to the game, you become so preoccupied with ensuring you have what you want to say perfectly translated, by the time you have the correct verb tense and ending, the conversation has continued and you neither get to say what you wanted nor get any practice. Then when it comes more naturally, you can focus more on the nitty gritty bits of grammar.
When the older group started, they were asked to introduce themselves to me. This included their name, age, and any hobbies they had. This is where the main grammatical issue arose, and it was incredibly interesting to see them work it out on their own. The starting children gave a handful of hobbies, such as “my hobbies are gaming, swimming, and reading”, and then we got to one child who said something along the lines of “my hobbies are gaming”. At this point, I corrected the “hobbies are” to “hobby is”, praised him and moved on. The next child, hearing this correction, stated “my hobby is swimming and running”, so I corrected them but the other way around. After a few stumbles by a couple of children following this, by the last few children, they were grammatically perfect. This practical usage of grammar was then summarised by the teacher and used immaculately by the children for the rest of the lesson.
What also impressed me was the amount they had picked up elsewhere. As a warming up task, they were asked to introduce themselves to their seat neighbours (so the basics of name, age, hobbies – as they had done with me). Within a minute, I was hearing these nine to eleven year olds asking each other which places they liked travelling to, what job they wanted to have when they grew up, what subjects at school they enjoyed, the list goes on. The confidence behind them was what was so inspiring. This was a language that they hadn’t picked up at home, and yet willingly engaged with me, their teacher, and each other in. All within a primary school. I even had a few deviations of questions thrown my way: “Will you be here every week?” (future tense!); “Are you able to speak any… Hollandish?” (he quickly said “Dutch” when a classmate reminded him of that word); “Where do you come from?”.
Using the language regularly, and making it the only language of discussion, has clearly had a positive impact on their education in English. Their spontaneity, capability of absorbing new grammatical ideas, and wish to expand their vocabulary so as not to fall short of what they wished to express (“Hoe zeg je advocaat in het Engels?” “Lawyer” “Thank you I would like to become a lawyer when I’m older.”), was genuinely brilliant to witness.
Fundamentally, they are a fantastic bunch of kids to help teach. Their enthusiasm, understanding of the importance of learning another language, and willingness to push farther (unafraid to make mistakes or be corrected), all at such a young age, is both a joy, and a reason I believe language learning over here is so much more successful than back home in Britain. The same mentality that I see in my Dutch lessons (made up of adults that want to be there) is exactly what I see in those classrooms.
This makes me incredibly excited about what the rest of this year holds not just for myself but for these kids… and rest assured, the funnier comments from them will come up. I already had one boy have a genuine back and forth with me when I told him I’m British: “No you’re not”, “Yes, I’m from the south of England”, “No but you’re not, are you?”… it took for the teacher to step in for this to stop.
I’ll be going back in tomorrow with the little rascals, and can’t wait to see these skills increase as time goes on. In the meantime, I’ve been busy with a variety of fun (and not so fun (such as destroying my passport)) activities that I’ll write about in a blogpost that I’ll do later this week. But for now, that is my experience of how English is taught here (it certainly isn’t common to start at such a young age (yet, though there is a push to make this happen)), and I think to an extent even why it is taught the way that it is. For anyone reading who has worked in a similar role, or learned a language in the same way, I would be really interested to hear your comments on how you found that.
Until next time!
The English Netherlander 