The when, why and how of English learning

After reading the three articles individually, we have had a very intense debate about when, why and how should English be learnt.

One thing we agree about is the importance of how English is learnt, of the methodology used. You may read our previous post regarding good and bad practices to learn languages. When it comes to age, we don't agree, because some of us believe that an early start will be advantageous, while others think that age is not a key factor. Nevertheless, we feel that after reading the three papers we still don't know enough about the issue to give a final opinion.

We have also discussed if English can be harmful for Basque or not, and we haven't reached an agreement on this either. Some of us think that depending on the sociolinguistic context, introducing English at an early age could be harmful for Basque, or maybe the time spent learning English could bring more benefit to children if it was given to improving Basque. During our discussion, we have come to the conclusion that the problem of Basque is due to low social prestige. To many people living in the Basque Country English is a very strong and prestigious language compared to Basque, and that could be the reason why English could become a threat for Basque, that would be a minority language coexisting with two very strong languages in school.