1. UNIT 1 CONTENTS How children learn L1/L2 Babies/Young Children
How to start a lesson in English
Classroom language
How to end a lesson in English

2. Knowing how children learn their first language can help us teach them a second language
Socio-cultural theories of first language development lay emphasis on language being learned through interaction with others, with knowledge becoming internalized during this social activity.

3. Child language acquisition
• We know a lot about how children learn their
first language (L1; mother tongue)
– At 6 weeks, babies “coo” and “babble”
– At 12 months, infants can produce single words
– At 18 months, infants can produce two-word
sequences
– By 5 years of age, children can produce complex
constructions.

4. Piaget
Jean Piaget 1896 – 1980
• The Swiss psychologist and educator Jean
Piaget is famous for his learning theories based on different stages in the development of children's intelligence.
• How do children learn?
• Language development is an aspect of cognitive development in general
• Children learn...
– by interacting with the world around them
– when they take action to solve problems

5. Piaget and young language learners
• For Piaget, there are four stages of mental growth:
1) birth to age two: sensory-motor stage
• Infants concentrate on concrete (or real) objects
– Teach using only real objects, real people and the “here and now”
2) age two to seven: pre-operational stage
• Children learn symbols in language, fantasy, play, and dreams;
– Teach using toys and pictures, imaginary creatures and situations
3) age seven to eleven: concrete operational stage
• Children master classification, relationships, numbers, and ways of
reasoning
– You can now start teaching basic grammar, semantic categories, etc
4) age eleven onwards: formal operational stage
• Children begin to master independent thought and other people's
thinking.
– World knowledge is sufficient for most language teaching purposes

6. REMEMBER First language: general meaning before individual words
Flow of sounds: connected sounds before they separate them into individual words
Only written language is divided into words and sentences
Stress on intonation patterns and sounds of words

7. CHILDREN AS LEARNERS
They learn in many ways: by listening, by imitating, by doing things
They are not able to understand grammar rules and explanations about language (VYLs)
They talk in their mother tongue about what they understand and do
They are curious and use their imagination
They love to play but have a short attention span
They like routines and repetition

8. CHILDREN UNDER SEVEN (VYLs)
They acquire L2 in much the same way as they acquire their first language
They do not realize that they are learning a foreign language (grammar)
They learn through hearing, doing things, imitating, playing

9. CHILDREN UNDER SEVEN (VYLs)
They acquire L2 in much the same way as they acquire their first language
They do not realize that they are learning a foreign language (grammar)
They learn through hearing, doing things, imitating, playing

10. CHILDREN BETWEEN SEVEN AND TWELVE (YLs)
They can understand simple explanations about language
They can read and write in English

11. YOUR HELP Make learning English enjoyable and fun
Do not worry about mistakes
Use gestures
Talk a lot (in English)
Play games, sing songs, say rhymes
Tell simple stories
Do not worry when they use their mother tongue
Answer in English
Recast in English what they say in their mother tongue