The Importance of Teaching French at an Elementary Level, Essay Example

A second language is an extraordinary asset in any person’s life, and for reasons having little to do with modern globalization. The benefits go beyond anything relating to a mere ease and convenience in moving through the world; they go to a more complete enriching of the person’s entire life. The skill that renders the world a more navigable place is an excellent thing, but the greater skill is that which opens the mind and the soul and, happily, the acquiring of French accomplishes all of it. As will be noted, this can most beautifully and fully occur when the learner is very young.

Language is never simply a form of communication. It is a revealing of ancient and modern belief systems, views on living and relationships, and ideas about everything touching humanity, all defined, and refined, through singular expression. “…Language is always about something beyond the immediate task of understanding or producing sentences. It is also an enrichment, since the language learner comes to see the world in a more complex way…” (Coleman, Klapper, x). In a very real sense, language has always been all humanity truly has, to transmit real feelings and ideas. As every culture is shaped by unique, and usually lengthy, ideologies and cultural systems, articulation is not merely articulation. It is the way a particular world reveals itself.

There has traditionally been a strange sort of mystique about languages, and this is reinforced by cultural possessiveness, or pride. When those of foreign nations attempt to translate a certain idea to an American, it is very common for hands to go in the air and heads to shake in exasperation. There are no right words, the foreigner will say, to capture what their own language means to convey. While it is certainly true that some of this failure to translate is actually due to that cultural pride, and a disinclination to either discover or demonstrate how adaptable their cherished modes of expression are, the reality is that translation is an enormously complex, and never fully satisfactory, affair.

Appropriately, French provides an excellent platform from which to examine this dilemma. It is a musical, lyrical language, associated with romance. It is unique in more than one arena, as well; while technically a European “romance” tongue, French has a sound unlike any other. Its cadences are vastly removed from other European languages, and it seems, somehow, to be more dependent upon, and directly related to, its home culture and people. With French, to English ears, the language is as captivating as it is alien.

This, however, reinforces the inner powers of language. English is notoriously complicated to learn for the foreigner, composed as it has been from such a variety of tongues. In English, there is an embarrassment of riches; if one word is not quite right, a dozen synonyms stand ready to do the job, drawn from German, Dutch, Latin, and ancient Anglo Saxon. French is far more concise in the vocabulary it offers, yet this reflects how dependent upon nuance and understanding it is. Bring these elements into translating a French novel, and it is inevitable that substantial artistic losses must occur, for translation is not simply the job of the translator, but of the reader as well. He or she brings to the material the real comprehension needed, if a translation is to be successful. This, sadly, is why so many are not. The translator must bridge two distinct worlds, and the limits of merely relaying the action, even descriptively, cannot begin to carry the intrinsic essence of what the language offers.

As ordinary as the image of the frustrated foreigner is, so too is a regret of the ordinary, decently educated American. It usually runs along the lines of wishing French had been learned early in life, and that factor of the “when” is pivotal. Whether they consciously acknowledge it or not, the reality is that such people are aware of a deep truth: a foreign language is rendered enormously more easy to master when the learner is very young.

Not surprisingly, all learning is easier in youth. Life experience adds valuable perception when new educational challenges present themselves, yet that same experience, and even that which is by no means lengthy, impedes learning. It sets up barricades, and in spite of the learner’s ambitions. In very simple terms, we either lose the ability to take fresh information in as effectively as we once could, or the desire or impetus to do so loses force. We have already lived, to some extent, and a reflex of questioning the need to gather more information asserts itself.

As language is arcane in itself, it is to be expected that this kind of learning suffers the most in the process. Language not only relays our thoughts, it shapes them as well, and by a relatively young age we have every reason to believe that we have the necessary skills down. No matter how we value the beauty of another language and may appreciate what it can offer, a door of sorts is locked. Our ideas of expression are complete, and suit our social, and even artistic, requirements. There is, sadly, an automatic feeling that taking on another tongue is a difficult redundancy.

Enter, then, the extraordinary expansiveness of the child’s mind. It has no barriers or reflexes because it has not yet even developed the materials to fashion them. To the very young mind, and in a truly excellent way, all is grist that comes to the mill. The child exposed to French is not put off by how strange the sounds are because his own sounds are still being instilled within him. Ironically, he takes in the power and art of French simply because it is a thing to learn, and because, at this stage, he most easily can learn anything.

English and French, perhaps more than any other two languages, combine to confer a capability of expression vastly greater than the sum of its parts. In learning French very young, the child becomes equipped with an extraordinary range of expression that will reveal itself throughout his entire life.

Work Cited

Coleman, J. A., and Klapper, J. Effective Learning and Teaching in Modern Languages. New York, NY: Routledge, 2005. Print.