1. Talking about How Young
Learners Learn
Lesson 1

2. GENERAL OVERVIEW
In this course you will :
learn about teaching English as a foreign or additional language to young learners from three to 12 years old
consider how young learners develop cognitively, how they learn languages, and how your understanding of these two areas can help guide you in your role as a teacher of young learners and a teacher of language
combine theory with practice and be provided with examples that will help illustrate how you can teach language to young learners in your classroom
be introduced to ways of teaching the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), as well as techniques for using stories, songs and rhymes, games and role-play in your classroom
consider the role of assessment and evaluation in teaching
English to young learners

3. An Approach to TEYL
Teaching English to young learners (TEYL), including children within the 3-12 age range, in a meaningful and memorable way requires a person to understand how children learn and how they learn languages.
The following diagram shows how a number of building blocks (each representing a different part of language learning and teaching) can be placed together to create a structure that can represent our approach to TEYL.
By stacking these blocks one on top of the other, we can consider how each is crucial for the support and development of the following tower of understanding.

4. Building blocks of understanding in teaching English to young learners
                                                                    

5. Characteristics of YLs
VYLs (under 7)
YLs (7-12)
acquire through hearing and experiencing lots of English, in much the same way they acquire L1
learn things through playing; they are not consciously trying to learn new words or phrases – for them it’s incidental
love playing with language sounds, imitating, and making funny noises
are not able to organize their learning
not able to read or write in L1; important to recycle language through talk and play
their grammar will develop gradually on its own when exposed to lots of English in context
are learning to read and write in L1
are developing as thinkers
understand the difference
between the real and the
imaginary
can plan and organize how best to carry out an activity
can work with others and learn from others
can be reliable and take responsibility for class activities and routines
For more information, see: Slatterly, M., & Willis, J. (2001). English for primary teachers. Oxford: Oxford University Press

6. Piaget (one of the best-known
theorists in developmental psychology)
“tried to work out how children thought and developed cognitively”
children actively construct knowledge from their experiences
from birth, children try to make sense of the world through their actions

7. Developmental stages of children
Sensori-Motor Stage (from months) children seem to learn through interaction with the world around them, and through the use of their senses. Children are particularly egocentric, able to think about things in terms of how they interact and link with themselves.
Pre-operational stage (from 18 months - 7 years) children are developing towards the next stage, start using some aspects of the concrete world around them, begin to internalize information in a very basic way through the use of their imagination and memory.

8. Concrete Operational Stage (from years) able to operate and learn through their interactions with the concrete world around them, moving towards the final stage which would involve more abstract thinking.
Formal Operational Stage (from approximately 11 years of age to adulthood) able to develop more abstract thought and understanding in this final stage of cognitive development Coincides with puberty and the development into adulthood.

9. Influential findings in Piaget's work
Identified how children could assimilate (add new knowledge to support old knowledge already established by them ) and accommodate (change their present understanding of something based on the new experience they have had), and how they might develop their cognition and understanding using both.
Believed the stages were fairly fixed in age and children went through them in this particular sequential order - children could only move onto the next stage when they had completed the stage before and were ready to do so.
“Children should be given thinking time when faced with an experience or problem that they are trying to solve.”

10. Issues with Piaget's work
Margaret Donaldson recreated many of Piaget’s experiments and found that:
Piaget’s observations and measurements didn’t
really reflect the way children were actually able to think.
Piaget didn’t consider the role of language to be
an important catalyst in the cognitive development of the child.
Children were able to achieve and understand more than Piaget believed they could.
Piaget had not taken into account what sense children were making of the type of adult questioning that was used in the experiments he carried out, or the fact that the experiments were taking place in very unnatural and child-unfriendly settings, such as science laboratories.

11. Lasting importance of Piaget's work
Established the idea of the child as a lone scientist who was actively seeking answers
Suggested that children had the need for thinking time
Thought about the child as an individual who developed and thought as an individual rather than a small version of an adult or a passive and empty vessel waiting for adults to fill his or her mind with information
Was the first step in gaining understanding of the cognitive development of children

12. Language is Central to Child Development
Lev Vygotsky (1978) & Jerome Bruner (1987)
believed, in contrast to Piaget that:
language was central to the cognitive development of children
it was instruction (provided by an adult, a teacher, or a more able peer) that helped children to learn and develop

13. Vygotsky and Bruner believed that the act of internalization for children (moving thought from something that was spoken out loud to thought that was in their heads) was helped and supported when another more knowledgeable person talked the 'thinking' process through with children and instructed or guided them along as they did so.

14. Guiding the 'thinking' process
Now let's find all the pieces with the straight edges and put them over here.
And where are the four corner pieces?
Oh, yes. Here they are.
Let's take all the pieces out of the box and turn them over.

15. Piaget’s views Vygotsky’s views
Piaget talked of children working through different stages of learning on their own.
Vygotsky (1978) described the difference between:
what children could achieve (and how they could develop) on their own
and what children could achieve (and how they could develop) when an adult was able to work with them as the zone of proximal development

16. Encouraging development and growth
Do you think it would sink if you put it in water?
How could we put the stones together so that they would make a wall?
Is it heavy?
Do you think the big ones should be at the top or the bottom?
How does the stone feel?
With scaffolding, children could develop and grow because the adult would give support to their thinking and encourage them to think in ways that would develop their own ability to think through situations.

17. Making sense of experiences
Donaldson believed that children were able to cognitively develop by trying to make sense of the experiences that they had, and by asking questions and trying things out, or hypothesizing
The child creates a hypothesis and searches for meaning and patterns by using his /her own knowledge of communication
The child uses this gathered feedback to establish his/her own rules and then internalize these rules and remember them
The child looks for clues and uses anything around him/her to support the hypothesis
The child then tests this hypothesis by listening, questioning and trialing. The child then adjusts the hypothesis according to the feedback received

18. How Do We Think Children Learn Languages?
Language learning – innate and universal?
Critical period for language learning?
Noam Chomsky believed that:
learning was innate – it
happened to all individuals
there was an innate language
capacity in all of us which he
called the Language
Acquisition Device (LAD).
This ability to acquire
language was later referred
to as Universal Grammar
(UG).
Lenneberg thought that:
there was a critical period, up to
the age of eleven, in which children
were able to learn language
if language was introduced to
children after this age, it was
extremely difficult for them to
learn it. “This hypothesis is one of
the main reasons for starting the
teaching of foreign or second languages early in a child's schooling.”
Bruner feels that there is a Language Acquisition Support System (LASS) supplied by adults, or more able mentors, that helps children to develop such a language acquisition device and that this input and support is crucial to the success of language acquisition in children.

19. Multiple Intelligences
Linked closely with the three types of learning styles is the work of Howard Gardner (1993) who suggested that there are a lot of different learning styles or intelligences, as he called them, that we all have at our disposal.
Children with Linguistic Intelligence:
favor reading, as well as the creative use of words (such as doing crossword puzzles)
enjoy listening and telling stories
have good memories for names, places, dates
and trivia
Children with Logical-Mathematical Intelligence:
favor sorting, ordering, classifying, ranking and sequencing
enjoy research and organization
have the ability to reason deductively and can recognize
and manipulate abstract patterns or relationships

20. Children with Spatial Intelligence:
favor the use of diagrams, maps, charts, plans, pictures and seeing how
things fit together
favor the ability to create visual-spatial representations and be
transferred mentally or concretely
need a mental or physical "picture" to understand
the information being presented
Children with Kinesthetic Intelligence:
lean toward the physical, and favor interaction with and manipulation of
themselves and objects
use their bodies to solve problems, or convey ideas and emotions
use physical activities, good hand-eye coordination and
have a tendency to move around a lot while expressing
themselves
Musical Intelligence The use of rhythm, music and song is particularly important to this intelligence. Songwriters, singers and musicians would use this intelligence much more than others

21. Children with Interpersonal Intelligence:
interact and relate well with others
work effectively in a group and understand and recognize the
goals, motivations and intentions of others
are skilled at communicating, mediating and
negotiating
Children with Intrapersonal Intelligence:
have the ability to understand their own emotions, goals and
motivations.
have good instincts about their strengths and
abilities
have personal thoughts about what is happening to
individuals and the world around them

22. How Do We Think Children Learn a Foreign or Second Language?
Jim Cummins (1979), suggests two types of language that can be acquired:
Proficiency Cognitive Academic Language (CALP).
Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS)
everyday social interactive language used when interacting from a very early age
language heard when listening to children their own age playing
language used when learning about and discussing content in an academic class
language used by a ten-year-old when studying topics like the characteristics of the sun in a science class
We need to prepare our students to use and understand both types of language.