Résumé:
This piece of research is a descriptive study the aim of which is to identify the reasons behind
parents’ interest in teaching English to their children at an early age in the Algerian context. It
attempts to shed some light on the existing discrepancy between Algeria’s language policy
and foreign language needs in this country. In order to tackle this issue, a questionnaire and an
interview were used as research tools. The questionnaire was used to collect data from a
sample of 30 parents who have children (5 to 10 years old) studying English in private
schools. The aim is to find out why a significant growing number of parents are encouraging
their children to study English at such an early age. The interview was conducted with four
subjects, from Jijel University, who studied English in primary schools in the 90’s in order to
make a retrospective evaluation of the experience of teaching English in the primary public
schools from the vintage point of the few pupils themselves in that period. The data analysis
revealed that a huge percentage of the studied sample acknowledges the importance of
English and strongly agrees that it should be taught in primary schools instead of French. On
the other hand, the findings of the interview show that the four subjects believe that studying
English in the primary phase was helpful for further acquisition, and argued that it should be
reintroduced at least as an alternative first foreign language. On the basis of the results
obtained from both the questionnaire and the interview, some pedagogical recommendations
have been proposed for the Algerian policy makers and educators who will hopefully take the
linguistic needs of the society into consideration and give English a more relevant status by
considering its re-introduction to be taught in Algerian primary schools.
