THe Principles of Teaching A Foreign Language During the Early Stages

Abstract

Several researches indicate that many students begin to dislike English (EFL) in the second term of the first year of junior high school in Japan. The purpose of this paper is to find out the causes of the dislike for the study of English, and to suggest how to solve the problem. The author discusses the problem from a standpoint of neurolinguistics. The empirical research done by L. Obler (1981) shows that there is right hemispheric participation in second language learning, and that this participation is particularly active during the early stages of learning the second language. Right hemispheric dominance for language is, therefore, an accepted teaching during the early stages. From this viewpoint, several concrete strategies will be proposed.