Foreign Languages Should Be Given A Higher Priority In German Elementary Schools

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Trier, language: English, abstract: “We need to change our education system” – utterances such as this one are commonly heard. In German elementary schools a development in teaching focus in the last few years is said to have actually taken place: officially, there has been a small shift from traditional subjects, such as mathematics, on modern languages, such as English or French. Fifteen years ago, however, foreign languages were rarely taught at German elementary schools, and if they were given room in the children’s timetable, they played only a subordinate role. On the contrary, foreign languages are included in the timetable today, but many schools decided to teach them integrated into the other subjects, which makes no teacher feel especially responsible for carrying out the task – most teachers seem to be aware of this deplorable situation but do not want to focus more on languages, needing the time to teach the basics of the other subjects. This cannot be tolerated and there are abundant aspects to why foreign language teaching should start at the latest at elementary school level.