Every modern school studies a foreign language. Sometimes, even a few. English is considered the most popular, although it happens that the main foreign language is French, German or Spanish. But, unfortunately, the true school situation is that, at best, the child will be shown one language, and that one with grief in half, and there is nothing to talk about the second or more.
And what actually is a foreign language at school? Imagine a large class, which consists of completely differently motivated children, with different speeds of assimilation of the material and different ways of perceiving it. Even simpler objects in such conditions often turn into something obscure and poorly understood. And what can we say about foreign languages, for a better mastery of which constant language practice is required. And, studying a foreign language at school, children will at best be given a five-minute recording to listen to, moreover, in the language that was used a hundred years ago. And do not say that "we teach children the classic version of the language." This, in fact, is a dead stock of knowledge with which in real life we will not go far. Why do we need knowledge of a foreign language? Communication when traveling abroad, reading the original literature - these are perhaps the main reasons. But today's spoken language, including English, is constantly evolving. And almost all educators are unlikely to keep pace with these innovations. And today's schoolchildren, like fifty years ago, can say what their name is, how old they are. Well, a couple of commonly used phrases. So, the same thing can be learned at home with any simple course in a couple of hours. And why then learn a foreign language at school, if it is easy to learn at home? Even when it comes to vocabulary, either it should be really large to be easy to read, or minimal to just copy any text into a translation program and familiarize yourself with a good translation. The first option requires constant practice, and not a primitive translation of no less primitive texts, replete with uncommon, in fact, obsolete words. But in the new textbooks there are a lot of pictures, which, apparently, is intended to attract the attention of children to the study of the subject. Probably, for the same purpose, posters with photographs are hung in many classes. And teaching a foreign language at a school in general will then be based on recognizing pictures. The best that the school could do is to provide at least a weekly communication between students and a live native speaker.
Still, it is no secret that the qualifications of many teachers of a foreign language leave much to be desired. Many of them were unlikely to have a communication practice. But even if everything is in order with the level of knowledge, how can a class of twenty or more people submit two lessons a week, submit material, interrogate and explain something else. After all, children, of course, easily learn new information, but only that which is attractive and interesting. And in order to interest in an incomprehensible set of letters, definitely requires a great pedagogical talent.
Some advanced schools have already begun to practice teaching a foreign language in elementary school. And this is a big step forward. Although, here, of course, the sooner the more effective. At this age, with the proper approach, children can speak any, even difficult, foreign languages almost on a par with their native one. It would be logical here not to start learning a foreign language at school, but to attend to this even in kindergarten. But for this, we need both constant practice and an individual training program.
In the most ideal case, of course, it would be good for each student to teach the language individually. Moreover, not in the manner of a teacher, but by carefully analyzing the methods of assimilation of information by this child. Here is a variant of perception (audio, visual, kinetic), and the type of memory and memory speed, and many more factors. It would seem that this is obvious, but only a few elite institutions guessed to group 5-7 people with similar characteristics into small groups and teach them the language of such images. Or even a grouping according to the level of knowledge and skills. Unfortunately, in our schools they are always not even equal to the average student, but to the weak, i.e. They motivate children not to reach for the leader, but to relax, because such a level is considered quite acceptable. And so the level of knowledge of a foreign language remains at a negligible level.