hope people can help me find and correct my mistakes as much as possible, thank you soooo much.
Topic：Teaching primary school students foreign languages has more advantages than disadvantages. Do you agree or disagree?
In the era of globalization, a foreign language is necessary in international affairs, including some business meetings, cross-cultural negotiations and overseas assignments. Whether to teach primary school students foreign languages has been a topic of discussion.
The primary advantage is, of course, the convenience of communication. Even if machine translation is able to eradicate all the language barriers between people, would there be no point in learning foreign languages? By no means. Foreign languages could not only strengthen the commercial interactions between different countries and communities, but have positive effects on their cultural communications. Secondly, the primary school is the key stage to learn new things since the students ages 6 to 12 not only have a better memory, but also have a stronger capacity to accept knowledge as well, especially the principle that requires memory abilities such as the foreign language project. Secondly (you already used "Secondly" in your previous sentence, consider using "Furthermore" instead), children who do not take a foreign language course will lack a competitive advantage that will be useful when applying for jobs in the future (see my note below on the proper usage of "peer pressure"). More seriously, they may even lose self-confidence when they find it hard to keep pace with others who learned another language at a young age. Additionally, learning a foreign language in primary school could cultivate children’s interests and help them to hold good study habits, which could play a valuable role in their future studies.
Some individuals oppose this attitude, though. They argue that learning a foreign language from primary school could cause adverse effects on the growth of children. Firstly, children may not have enough energy to study another language as well as their primary language (see note below on "vernacular"). It could have a detrimental influence on the studying of basic subjects and in the meantime, lower the next generation’s awareness of their own national cultural identity, which is damaging, both to individuals and the whole country.
My own view is that, overall, children should be encouraged to study a foreign language in the primary school and, more importantly, they should be given the freedom to make their own choices rather than be forced to study this skill.
Great work! This is a very well-written essay. A few notes:
"Peer pressure is the influence exerted by a peer group or an individual, encouraging other individuals to change their attitudes, values, or behaviors in order to conform to group norms." (Definition from Wikipedia) Note that this is not the same as competition with peers.
"at school" or "at primary school" refers to where someone is at a specific moment. Example:
-Where is Johnny? He's not in the house.
-He's at school.
"in school" or "in primary school" refers to the entire period of study, that is, the several years a child spends studying in school. Example:
-Where did you learn to speak Spanish?
-I started studying Spanish in primary school.
"A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is a second language or foreign language to the population, such as a national language, standard language, or lingua franca." (Definition from Wikipedia) Note that this refers to the native language of an entire population, not the native language of one person.
