Early Foreign Language Teaching with a reference to an Indian experience.

Abstract

This dissertation develops a research about Early Foreign Language Teaching and tries to highlight what are the best methodologies and the foundations not to forget when the aim is to teach a foreign language to infants. At the beginning it deals with bilingualism: how it affects the brain, the advantages of being bilingual and the misbelieves about bilingual education. The dissertation goes on describing children’s linguistic development, comparing the linguistic progresses of bilinguals and monolinguals in order to detect the profits of growing up speaking two or more languages. The two protagonists on the educational stage are then presented: the student, namely the focus of the process, and the teacher, who has the important role of acting like a support and a director of the scene. Characteristics of linguistic input are analysed especially for what concerns the concept of scaffolding and teacher-talk. It was necessary for me to observe the notion of intercultural communication and the possible problems that can arise from lack of knowledge about this topic: working in a foreign country many differences in the teaching methodology were present and a possible model which can help dealing with problems in intercultural communication is presented in this chapter. A description of the main methodologies available to teachers of pre-schools is then presented, with the illustration of the reasons why they work well with children and how they should be blend into their daily-routine. A brief consideration about the type of bilingualism present in India is offered in the last chapter with some considerations on the future of languages in India and the risks of subtractive bilingualism for the new generations. The last part of the research presents my considerations about the International School were I worked, strength points and defects are then presented in this last chapter. Thanks to the period spent in India I was able to learn about differences between Indian and Italian pre-schools and to notice how often schools still tend to develop teacher\parents-centred programmes rather than student-centred ones.