Seen in an international perspective, the training of linguistically qualified pre-primary staff and language teachers proceeds along many widely varying paths, and is consequently extremely heterogeneous in structure. For instance, those teaching foreign languages at primary level may have a degree in education qualifying them for nursery education duties or primary teaching plus an extra qualification covering early foreign language learning; but they may equally well have qualified as a specialist subject teacher.
Nursery education staff asked to teach a foreign language programme now often use further education programmes to obtain a qualification as a specialist teacher of languages. The training provided should first and foremost ensure that the general principles of education at the nursery education and primary education levels are sufficiently thoroughly implanted to be reflected in due course in the planning and implementation of educative processes.
This entails a good understanding of child development and of the age-appropriate delivery of learning content. During the learning processes, the activities of the children, and their spontaneous initiatives and natural appetite for learning, have an important role to play, as does their acquisition of information in the social context or from the teachers and other adults with whom they come into contact
[2].
The studies should ideally cover all material central to the intended professional field – and, of course, always with an eye to how the material is to be taught in the foreign language.
Recommendations:
- Practitioners and teachers who are to be involved in early foreign language learning should be trained in courses of study specifically geared to child-appropriate language teaching.
- The study courses should be competence-oriented and as comprehensive as possible both in imparting the underlying theoretical principles and in developing and fostering practical competences.
- For early foreign language learning at nursery education and primary education levels, the practitioners and teachers should have a command of the language rated at level B2 to C1 of the European Reference Framework, so that the language model delivered may be as error-free and authentic as possible.
- During the course of study the foreign language should be the working language and be used as often as possible.
- The syllabus content should have an intercultural emphasis: that is to say, the two languages and cultures – the source language and culture and the target language and culture – should both receive attention, and their relationship to each other should be explored.
- Ideally, courses should prepare students to put the didactics of multilingualism into practice – i.e. prepare them to take cognisance of, and turn to good use, all the languages that might potentially be spoken within a learning group, along with the children’s past experiences of language learning.
- During the period of training there should be the opportunity to try out pedagogical principles and methods in practice and to review them critically in group discussion.
- As part of the training course, students should also be provided with the linguistic resources needed for child-relevant topics and situations, and with the lexical material they will need for directing the learning process.
- Students should be given the opportunity to acquaint themselves with relevant developments in languages policy, and to discuss such developments amongst themselves, not least with reference to their own professional situation.
- The training course should feature a period of residence abroad, either as an option or as an integral part of the syllabus.