English Language Teaching to Young Learners: Possible Pitfalls after Lowering the Age of Compulsory English in Pakistan

The young learners have an inbuilt and inborn capacity of absorbing the language inputs. With the growing age, their absorbing capacity reduces though it gets compensated by experience. The adult age can bring wisdom and knowledge but for acquisition, improvement and development of the skills, particularly the language skills, prime time is the young age. There has been a growing awareness about this in Pakistan where, in recent years, a major shift has taken place i.e., starting compulsory English from class-1 in all private and Government schools instead of class 6th which had been the earlier practice since the independence of the country in 1947. There are many associated complex issues surrounding this new scenario which have emerged due to this major shift and need to be explored, meditated and researched from all the possible dimensions in order to enhance the advantages of the changed paradigm, reduce the risks to the bare minimum and train and fine tune the teachers and the schools to cope with this change in a professional and effective manner.