Should Young (Bilingual) Children Learn a New Language at School?

This research has been carried out to explore the extent to which the learning of a new language in a formal context of primary school may influence children’s perceptions of and reactions to extreme exolingual situations of communication situations characterized by the absence of shared languages. It was hypothesized that children would perceive the situations and react differently depending on their language learning background. Results of this research contribute to the understanding of the effect of learning a new language on some aspects of the metacognitive awareness in children at different levels of the process of problem solving. The findings support the notion that learning a new language at an age and in a context in which children may be conscious about their language learning may provide plurilingual children with a positive identity construction.