Abstract:

The article is elaborating the experience of some good teachers in the Czech Republic. It covers three important questions of a known and frequent issue. They are treated in more details and concern three fields of teaching young children a foreign language, German in that case: When to start the teaching, what material to teach and which methods to use.

The first problem to identify a starting age of learning a foreign language has its importance and its own history. Many specialists have held the view that a suitable timing of the learning process may exercise a great influence on the levels of single fields of language mastering, first of all at the quality of pronunciation.

We put a limit of the verbal nouns and practice only the names of school subjects: Rechnen, Schreiben, Zeichnen. We do not avoid the nouns that compared with the mother tongue of learners are different in gender. We practice them with adjectives: ein altes Buch, ein hohes Haus, etc.

As to verbs, we do not practice the 2. person of plural. By means of a brief research we have found out that children don´t use that form in their practical usage. As for the tenses, the focus of our attention represents the present tense. The future and past have their emphasis on the verb sein. The full verbs are being practiced only occasionally. At the later stage we incorporate writing and reading emphasizing pronunciation.
Within current syllabus, German is a non-compulsory subject at the primary school.

Keywords:

German, childern, vocabulary, primary school, language.