Starting early with foreign languages does not necessarily enhance learning

Over the past 50 years, politicians across European countries have periodically lowered the age at which children learn foreign languages at school. In Denmark, before 1970 pupils started learning English in Year 6. In 2014, the latest legislative change lowered the commencement of learning English from Year 3 to Year 1.

But it does not necessarily follow that children will be more proficient in English for this reason. This is the finding of a large interdisciplinary research project funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark. The preliminary findings have been published in the prestigious journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition from Cambridge University Press.

A group of researchers from the humanities, psychology and statistics took advantage of the change to the law in 2014. The fact that children in both Year 1 and Year 3 started their first English lessons created a rare opportunity to carry out a comparative study of how well children learn English at different ages.

Older children learn more

The research team has followed a total of 276 children in Years 1 and 3 at six different schools. Using three rounds of English tests, questionnaires and interviews, the researchers have analysed the children’s English proficiency and how much they have improved over time.

‘The research project shows that children in Year 3 are better from the beginning, and they also learn more – and more quickly,’ says Teresa Cadierno, lead researcher and professor of foreign language acquisition. Because of their age, they are more likely to have heard, seen and used English outside the classroom.