ELP: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

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.