Only if schools are equipped with sufficient facilities and manned with capable teachers can first-grade children be taught English effectively, according to a policymaker with the Ministry of Education and Training.

“Children can certainly learn English as early as the first-grade, but whether they should be taught it or not depends on the conditions at their school and even in their country,” said Nguyen Loc, deputy director of the ministry’s National Institute for Education Strategy and Curriculum Development.

Loc was speaking to Thanh Nien at a time of widespread public debate about the benefits or otherwise of learning a foreign language so early in life.

His institute is drafting a national scheme in preparation for English becoming a compulsory subject from the third-grade on, which is scheduled to begin next year.

In the nation’s two largest cities, intensive English is already an option from the start at many schools, where first-graders who have passed the aptitude test learn the language for six to eight periods a week.

More and more schools in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are getting on board, and an increasing number of parents are making their preschool kids learn some English in advance to help them pass the test.

Asked for his opinion on this trend, Loc said the education ministry did not prohibit any province or city from allowing intensive English classes for first-grade school children if the conditions were right.

He said there was a rising trend in the world to teach English at an early age as experiments and studies “prove that children, even if they cannot read or write yet, can pick up a foreign language quickly.”

Loc cited Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, where English is the language of administration or the second language and children learn it right from the first year of school.

“The increased amount of time given over to teaching and learning foreign languages should mean that the students will do better, but only if the resources and manpower are there,” he said in response to public concern that children’s timetables were being crammed with too many English periods.

Still, their immaturity can impede their progress in class, he said. For example, many young children find it hard to pay attention and are easily distracted.

“However, it’s not a factor that determines whether the teaching and studying of foreign languages at an early age is a success or not,” he said.

The decisive factors are the teachers and the facilities, according to Loc.

He went on to warn that just because many of their peers were doing it did not justify making a child learn a foreign language if the study environment was unsatisfactory.

“Schools that rush to open intensive English classes without adequate conditions are making a big mistake.”

He also advised schools to rethink the use of entrance exams for intensive English as they put pressure on children and their parents, even though it was understandable given the large and growing number of enrolment applications and the restricted number of places available.

“There should be a regulation requiring those schools that want to teach the subject to have the wherewithal to enroll 100 percent of the applicants,” Loc said.

VietNamNet/TN