In my years of experience as a kindergarten
teacher there is something very important to point out regarding the language
learning and this is that, the younger the students are introduced to a new
language the easier it will be for them to acquire it. In the last decades we
have witnessed a change of paradigm in the Teaching-Learning processes from
grammatical methods and drilling exercises, which are not suitable at all to
work with young students, to communicative methods, that tend to reproduce the
natural way in which people learn languages.
The European Language Portfolio, which takes
into account crucial aspects such as the motivation, the active role of the
students, critical reflections and self-assessment, is a fantastic tool to be
used in a communicative approach but there are advantages and disadvantages to
bear in mind if we want to introduce it in an early stage of language learning
as kindergarten.
The advantages are very clear. In every single education system around the
world the early stages are the base. Implementing this system in Kindergarten
with approaches like CLIL and the communicative one is going to offer to our
pupils plenty of opportunities to, in Krashen’s terms, acquire the language and
get a basic picture of how it is structured. As they grow up they will be able
to learn the grammar needed to monitor and improve their command of the
language. A resource as ELP is very useful to develop our pupil’s self-autonomy.
As for the disadvantages, it is very important
to be conscious that pupils at that age are not as honest as they should be
when doing a self-evaluation exercise. Probably at this early stage of language
learning introducing “My First Portfolio” could be a very difficult task for
the teachers since it demands the students to evaluate themselves by choosing different
levels of learning. Very often the students pick up the higher level of
learning although this is not always true. Moreover I think that we should
simplify the current model because in my opinion it is not possible that pupils
using it without aid.
