A Message to Schools: Rethinking Language Teaching from Preschool Onwards
What if learning a foreign language didn’t begin with a textbook, but with a song, a story, a role play, a smile? What if schools dared to imagine English learning where joy, emotion, and creativity mattered more than mechanical repetition?
Young children don’t need grammar lessons to enter a language. They need experiences. To move, sing, handle objects, listen, interact. It is by living the language that they understand and integrate it. That’s why the approach I propose is sensory, expressive, theatrical… and profoundly human.
Too often, English teaching starts too late, in rigid formats, with goals that don’t match young children’s development. And yet, early childhood is the most favorable period for linguistic and cultural openness. It’s the moment when ears are the sharpest, curiosity is at its peak, and confidence has not yet been held back by fear of mistakes.
Integrating English from preschool is not “too early.” On the contrary, it is giving children a unique chance to make a language their own, naturally, through play and joy. Schools that embrace this path cultivate far more than vocabulary: they nurture expression, empathy, imagination, and prepare the world citizens of tomorrow.
