Early Childhood Foreign Language Learning

Posted on Mar 2, 2025 in Pedagogy

MODULE 1: HOW YOUNG CHILDREN LEARN FOREIGN LANGUAGES

What is Early Childhood?

According to UNESCO, Early Childhood is the period that goes from birth to eight years old. The end of this period varies according to different theorists and educational systems, such as the Spanish Education System, which shortens it to six years old. However, all agree that this is the time with the greatest brain development in human beings and that early education lays the foundations for subsequent learning.

Brain development is a very complex process. There are different areas or domains where the brain develops. Ideally, these domains must develop harmonically at the same time. This will mostly depend on the adults around the baby (parents, teachers, caregivers, elder siblings, grandparents, etc.).

In English, these developmental domains are often referred to as the SPICE of life¹, because the starting letters of each domain form the word spice, creating an acronym².

Language Acquisition Theories

As it should have already been explained in other subjects, there are some theories about how a first language is acquired; as yet, there is not a universally accepted language acquisition theory³. However, Cognitivism (developed by Piaget), improved by the Socio-Cultural Theory by Vygotsky and the Social Interaction Theory by Bruner, is the most widely accepted.

These theories vary from Skinner’s behaviorism, which places emphasis on individual learning through reinforcement and imitation, to Chomsky’s biological theory, who believed in the existence of universal innate underlying learning mechanisms, to a cognitive interactive approach, either by learning through contact with the environment (Piaget) or within a social context (Vygotsky and Bruner), where adults and able peers help children to build language by giving them cognitive support.

Support must be given within the child’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), defined by Vygotsky as the area of support provided so that the child can accomplish a task s/he couldn’t do on his/her own. The gap between what a child knows how to do (comfort zone) and what he doesn’t (ZPD) should not be very wide, though it must represent a challenge for the child. If the task goes beyond the ZPD limits, learning will not take place (anxiety zone).

In addition, Bruner developed the concept of Language Acquisition Support System (LASS) and defined it as the process in which adults and experts help a child to acquire language. Wood, Bruner, and Ross coined the term scaffolding to describe this kind of cognitive support. Effective scaffolding includes:

Motivation: children must be interested in doing the task.

• Demonstration: an adult demonstrates how to do the task. He must have a thorough knowledge of the task and its components, the sub-goals that need to be accomplished, as well as knowledge of the child’s capabilities.
• Simplification: when a task appears to be difficult to achieve, adults can divide it into smaller bits or sub-goals.

• Attention to Relevance: during the process, the adult reminds the children what is the most relevant goal to achieve in the task and can suggest alternative ways to get the sub-goals (adaptive support).
• Fading: The final feature of scaffolding is to reduce the support provided to the children so that they are in control and take responsibility for their learning.
• Transfer of Responsibility: the child has not only learned how to complete a specific task but has also abstracted the process of completing the particular task. Once a child has learnt how to do something by him/herself, s/he doesn’t need scaffolding anymore.

Young Learners’ Abilities, Capacities, and Needs

Physically, the brain is more receptive to language learning at younger ages. A child’s brain differs from an adult’s because it is developing faster. It has more plasticity and it is easy to mold. In fact, a two-year-old child has twice as many connections (the so-called synapses) in the brain as an adult. The young brain must use these connections or lose them. Thus, it makes sense to take advantage of this time to give the child as much knowledge as possible – including a second language.

In fact, learning to talk does not begin with the child’s first words, but long before that. Understanding is always one step ahead of talking. The same happens to adults: when we are learning a foreign language, we find that we can understand chunks of what is being said way before we are able to formulate phrases and actually talk in that language ourselves. This is called the silent period, when the brain is accumulating necessary information. It is generally accepted that children’s understanding is about six months ahead of their speech. Therefore, the younger they start learning a foreign language, the better.

As a matter of fact, before learning to speak, babies already communicate quite effectively. They can cry, coo, babble, and play with sounds. The acquisition period varies both in time and according to individuals but, in the end, all children reach it.

In addition to acquiring a large spoken vocabulary, there are four language areas in which each child must attain competence, regardless of the language spoken. Though, most obviously, they will not be expected to learn the specific terminology related to Linguistics, which must be carefully avoided by teachers.

Abilities and Stages

When teaching a second or foreign language⁴ to little children these abilities must be developed, taking into account that language is both:

• Receptive: the ability to understand other people’s speech. It starts very early. As said before, many psycho-linguists agree that this period begins at about six months of age. At this stage, babies mostly react to language. They smile, cry, or make short, easy sounds to show satisfaction, hunger, discomfort, etc. Intonation and pitch are crucial at this stage.
• Productive: the ability to produce language. It develops very fast, from six to twelve months and onwards. From this stage, babies start producing syllables and words.

Like adults, children acquire language in stages. Coos and babbles come first. Then around 9 months old, babies begin to say one word; soon after, they can say two words. Once the two-word stage is reached, the child’s language ability explodes. The child puts together more than two words but only uses nouns, verbs, and adjectives⁵, not speaking in complete sentences.

Usually, fast word acquisition occurs by 18 months. Babies are able to repeat spoken words and chunks. This enables them to acquire pronunciation, which belongs to the field of Phonology. Grammatical rules and word combinations (Syntax) appear at about age two. Toddlers are able to produce simple sentences. Mastery of vocabulary and grammar continues gradually through pre-school and school years.

• Cooing: Babies from one month old can produce long vowel sounds which appear to grow out of pleasurable interactions with their caregivers in a kind of

dialogue. This process is communication of affect between adult and infant in a mutual, rhythmic interaction

• Babbling: From 6 to 8 months babies produce more vowels combined with some consonants in a frequent repetition of sounds, like “dadadada“, it is also called echolalia. A crucial part of speech development is the time caregivers spend guessing what infants are trying to communicate thus integrating the child into their social world.
• First one-words appear between 9 to 18 months, words have the function of naming or labeling, condensing meaning, as when a child says “milk“, meaning “I want some milk“. This condensation is called holophrastic speech. At this stage, children are mainly developing Morphology (elements of vocabulary) and Semantics.
• From around 18 to 24 months, the child starts combining words into two-word sentences –“Go sleep”-, meaning “I want to go to sleep” or “Mummy car”, meaning “This is mummy’s car”. Vocabulary can grow from about 20 words at 18 months to around 200 words at 21 months.
• From 24 to 30 months, the child produces three or four-word sentences using a logical, though not correct Syntax –“Kate no like carrots”., meaning “I don’t like carrots”. This is called telegraphic speech. At this stage, children apply a systematic, basic set of rules such as adding ‘s’ for plurals, no matter if the word has an irregular plural, or inventing simpler words out of true words too complicated to repeat, like “choskit” for “chocolate biscuit”. The first case is called overregulation, the second is called blending. In both cases, children are applying Syntax unconsciously. These are some typical cases of overregulation:

• By 3 years old, children have completed the speech emergence stage. The child begins to build complex sentences, including relative clauses: “I want the doll who sings”. At this age, children indicate fantasy or make-believe linguistically or produce coherent personal stories and fictional narrative with beginnings and endings: “Once upon a time…”, “And they were happy forever and a day.”
• By 5 years old, the child’s use of language is very similar to that of an adult. They only need to consolidate and expand their vocabulary. They have already learnt to adjust language depending on whom they are speaking to. That is, they are applying Pragmatics.

Multiple Intelligences & Learning Styles

Howard Gardner⁷laid out this theory in his 1983 book, Frames of Mind: The Theory ofMultiple Intelligences. He stated that, contrary to what it was thought before, there is

not a unique, single intelligence but each person develops many intelligences or abilities. The key idea is not how clever one is but what skills one is best at.

Multiple intelligences work together, although semi-autonomously. Each person can develop some intelligences more than others and different cultures, social groups, and educational systems value some intelligences more than others.

Gardner’s theory is very important for teachers who work with young learners because it provides a framework for looking at children’s strengths instead of teaching to the teacher’s own preferred intelligences. Teachers must include varied activities in their day-to-day lesson planning that stretch each child to excel and feel success.

Not everybody likes learning in the same way and this is evident since early childhood. Learning styles depend on preferred learning channels, that is, the means by which people prefer to get information. There are three learning channels:

• Auditory

Tactile or kinaesthetic

• Visual

This means that there are, at least, three kinds of learners. Although many adult people have developed the other learning channels during their academic instruction, they tend to prefer to learn by their most gifted learning channel. In order to make language learning accessible to all kinds of learners, teachers should present information using the three learning channels.

MOTIVATION, CURIOSITY, AND EMOTIONS

When teaching young learners, teachers shouldn’t forget affectivity, which is dealt by means of motivation, encouragement and appraisal. If a child feels motivated, encouraged and praised, s/he will keep on trying to learn.

Motivation is the amount of inner powers that leads someone to get a goal to satisfy a necessity. It is both the guarantee to obtain an effective learning and, probably, the most outstanding factor in the process of learning a foreign language.

Children are curious by nature. They need to explore the world around them to understand it. Children are also naturally motivated to learn. Often, the teacher’s task is just to keep their curiosity and motivation high. Besides, for an effective learning to take place, all children need to feel: safe, confortable,relaxed, stimulated and loved.

Related to the world of emotions, Georgi Lozanov developed a method called Suggestopedia. He noticed that when people have negative thoughts about their abilities with respect to their learning process, they create psychological barriers to this learning. Teachers should deal with these fears and negative thoughts to help children build self-confidence and learn effectively.

Lozanov was first to talk about the affective filter. Then, Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis came; it also deals with the psychological barriers to learning. Negative thoughts (fear, inability, uncertainty, shyness, etc.) can create a mental state in the child which prevents him/her to learn effectively. Often, negative thoughts, related to the acquisition and learning of a foreign language, originate in infant education. This is why it is crucial to create a positive atmosphere in the classroom and encourage children to keep progressing and communicating in a foreign language

COMMUNICATION & LEARNING SKILLS

It is clear that communication is a bare necessity for human beings. However, it is not so evident the need of communication in a foreign language, especially when talking about very little children. Adults can say many reasons to do so (to get a better job, to travel, to speak to foreign friends, to read books or watch films in their original versions, to understand the lyrics of their favourite songs, etc.) But, what happens with little children? Recent studies have proved that an early start in foreign languages learning promotes sounds discrimination, thus improving pronunciation skills.

To be proficient in communicating with others, there are four communicative skills

that all Foreign Language teachers must develop in their pupils:

• Listening (L) is the ability to pay attention when others are speaking. It includes a secondary skill, Understanding (U) which is the ability to keep memory of what has been said.
• Speaking (S) is the ability to express ideas orally in a coherent way.

• Reading (R) is the ability to understand what is expressed in the written form.
• Writing (W) is the ability to express ideas in the written form.

Lately, a fifth skill was proposed by McRae. It is thinking. It implies that the ability of one person to think in a foreign language is essential to consider him/her a proficient speaker. Besides, we have seen that people start thinking before speaking or writing.

In Infant Education, Listening, Understanding and Speaking are the skills to work on, as young children only use the oral/aural channel. When teaching a Foreign Language at Infant Education, Reading and Writing should be delayed until the last years, just at the same time as they are learning to read and write in their mother tongue.

FLUENCY & ACCURACY

• Fluency means that the speaker can use language smoothly to express him/ herself and be understood by others. Therefore s/he can read, speak, write and listen to establish steady communication. Expressing ideas is essential while making errors is unimportant when learners aim at communicating fluently.
• Accuracy means precision, correctness. It implies that the learner does not make grammar or vocabulary mistakes when s/he is speaking or writing. When learners are concerned about accuracy and make a mistake, they tend to correct themselves immediately. This ability to self-correct is called monitor.

When teaching a foreign language to young children, we should only insist on fluency. In Infant Education, the key is that learners start communicating. We shouldn’t pay attention to accuracy yet.

ACQUISITION & LEARNING

• Language acquisition is the development of knowledge by using the language. It is a subconscious and natural process as the one a baby undergoes when learning its mother tongue. It is related to fluency and communication, and gives no importance to form.
• Language learning is the conscious study of a foreign language at school. It includes the learning of implicit, formal rules about how a language works.

When teaching English to Infant Education children, it should be done by means of a

process of acquisition, rather than by means of enforced learning.

Finally, it should be taken into account that children learn better through experience. The following drawing clearly highlights the learning cycle and its phases:

GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION METHOD (from early 19th century to the last third of the 20th century1)

Characteristics:

• It emphasises the teaching of grammar to provide learners with a mental training discipline.
• It makes learners learn the grammatical system of a language.
• It uses translation from (direct) and into (indirect) the target language. Direct translation is looked for any unknown word.
• Vocabulary is not taught systematically.

Techniques:

• Lessons are deductive. The teacher introduces grammar rules illustrated by examples that learners must study. Finally students study by heart both rules and examples.
• Exercises consist of lists with words and sentences which the learner translates into the target language (or mother tongue) with the help of a bilingual dictionary. It also teaches translation into L1². Learners advance from translating isolated sentences to complex texts.

Assessment:

After years of study, learners are not able to use L2 as a communicative tool.

• Besides of being boring and old-fashioned, it cannot be used in Infant School as learners cannot read or write yet.

THE DIRECT METHOD (from late 19th century to the first third of the 20th century)

Characteristics:

• It uses the target language or L2 as the only means of instruction and communication.
• It avoids L1 and translation as a technique.

Aim:

• To teach spoken everyday language to learners.

Techniques:

• The teacher presents a short text in a textbook. Difficult expressions are explained in the L2 by means of paraphrases, synonyms, demonstrations, or the context.
• The teacher (T) asks questions about the text to elicit³ meaning, and the students (Ss) read it aloud for practise. Much time is spent on questions and answers on the text or on talk about wall pictures.
• Inductive teaching: Ss are encouraged to discover the grammatical rule involved.
• Typical exercises include substitutions, dictation, narrative, and free composition.
• Good pronunciation is crucial. In its early stages, phonetic transcription was widely used.

HE AUDIOLINGUAL or ARMY METHOD (from the 1940s to the 1960s)

Characteristics:

• The learning of skills is separated –listening (L), speaking (S), reading (R), and writing (W)-.
• It gives more importance to the audio-lingual over the visual-graphic skills.
• Dialogues are the main means of presenting language.
• It emphasises practice techniques as mimicry, memorisation, and pattern drills.
• It makes wide use of the language laboratory.
• It is the first to use a linguistic and psychological theory as a basis for the teaching method.

Aims:

• Listening and speaking are given priority to reading and writing in the teaching sequence.
• Audiolingualism tries to develop L2 skills without reference to L1.
• Language learning is seen as the acquisition of a practical set of communicative skills.

Techniques:

• The learning process is of habituation and conditioning without any intellectual analysis. It favours an implicit learning strategy, emphasising active and simple practice. Language learning is considered a matter of relatively effortless and frequent repetition and imitation.
• Memorisation of dialogues and mimicry.
• Use of pattern drills or routine exercises that students get to internalise.
• Learners could learn a language without a specific academic background and inclination.
• For the first time, speaking was into the centre of the stage, and the teaching techniques with tape recordings and language laboratory drill offered practice in S and L, which rehearsed the verbal exchanges of ordinary talk in the form of stimulus and response.

Theoretical assumptions:

This is a behaviouristic method, following Skinner’s theory. Language learning is understood in terms of stimulus and response, operant conditioning, and reinforcement with an emphasis on successful error-free learning in small well-prepared steps and stages.

Assessment:

Teachers reported about the lack of effectiveness and the boredom it created among Ss.

Contributions to the teaching of languages:

• First method to develop a language teaching theory on linguistic and psychological principles.
• For the first time, language learning was accesible to large groups of ordinary learners.
• It presented syntactical progression, instead of learning vocabulary and morphology.
• It made use of simple techniques, without translation, of varied, graded, and intensive practice of specific features of the language.
• Separation of language skills.
• It introduced specifically designed techniques of auditory and oral practice, while previously oral practice had been textbook exercises read aloud.

THE AUDIOVISUAL METHOD (from the 1950s to the 1980s)

Characteristics:

• It involves the learner in meaningful utterances and contexts by using images.
• It makes use of films, filmstrips and a tape recorder.

• Aims:

  Lessons were graded into three learning stages Ss had to fulfil.

  
  
  • To make the learner familiar with everyday language.
  • To develop the capacity to talk on general topics and to read non-specialised texts.
  • To make use of a more specialised discourse of professional interest.

  Techniques:

  It followed a carefully thought and rigid order of events.

  1. Filmstrip and tape presentation. A filmstrip corresponds to an utterance, that is, the visual image and spoken utterance complement each other and constitute a semantic unit.
  2. Meaning is explained through pointing, demonstrating, and question/ answer.
  3. Dialogues are repeated several times and memorised by frequent replays of the tape- recordings and the filmstrip.

  In the exploitation stage, the lesson follows these stages:

  1. The filmstrip is shown without listening to the tape recording, and Ss are asked to recall the text or to make up their own dialogue.
  2. The topic is modified and applied to the Ss, their family or friends, by means of question/ answer or role playing.
  3. Grammar drill practice is based on language patterns appearing on the dialogue presentation. Pronunciation is also practised.

  Assessment:

  • Language learning was placed into a simple social context. It was considered as a meaningful spoken communication.
  • The method was good for the first learning stage and was a fresh alternative in language teaching, and –in the 1950’s- a good way of exploiting the new technologies then available.
  • It was difficult to convey meaning, because the filmstrip is no guarantee that the meaning of an utterance is not misinterpreted. Equivalence between utterances and visual images often presented difficulties.
  • It used very rigid teaching sequences.
  • No importance is attributed to linguistic explanations.
  • W and R are delayed and given little importance.

COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES (from the early 1970s until today)

General characteristics:

• All reacted against previous mechanical drill techniques, as in the Audiolingual and Audiovisual Methods.
• All tried to sensitise Tt⁴ to human relations in the language class.
• All tried to create an awareness of the hidden curriculum of the social and affective climate

created by the interaction among Ss and between Ss and Tt.

• The key, common concept to all is that of communication or communicative competence. This term reflects the social view of language, which was being explored by then.

New achievements made owe to these approaches:

• Design of language teaching objectives, language content, and syllabus as a unit of work.
• The idea of immersion on a language, including culture, habits, history, etc.
• The concept of languages for special purposes (LSP) as a way of catering for the language needs of professionals and university Ss.
• The creation of individualised learning, activity packets, graded examinations, different proficiency objectives and needs analyses, to meet the varying language needs in a more flexible and diversified approach to the curriculum.
• Doing research on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in order to deepen on new teaching/ learning strategies.

Assessment on some Communicative approaches

• The Silent Way is ineffective with young learners as it requires that learners feel highly motivated towards learning a new language. T doesn’t talk if Ss don’t tell him to do so! As learners have to undergo a long silent period of acquisition, children are easily demotivated.
• Community Language Learning does not work with young learners because it asks learners for a high degree of commitment towards the new language. This includes the sharing of knowledge, quite incompatible with infant egocentrism.
• Suggestopaedia reduces anxiety by using Baroque music during class, achieving a low affective filter level –that is, a high degree of relaxation and positive feelings-, but the method as a whole does not work with children, as Ss have to memorise long texts in the L2 from the beginning.

TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE (TPR)

James Asher found out that adding body movements increases language retention because their use involves the right side of the brain, which is not normally used in more “intellectual” approaches, because this side is where creativity and emotions reside.

TPR develops good listening comprehension habits by means of physical responses to commands. Everything the T says is a command. These begin with very simple instructions such as “Stand up”and “Sit down”, but they can become much more elaborate, as “Stand up, go next to the door, open it, and come back to your place”.

The first months of instruction are devoted to:

• 70% listening comprehension, responding to commands.
• 20% speaking (when Ss are ready, usually after about 10 hours of class)
• 10% reading and writing.

It is very effective at lower levels and with very young learners. In fact, it is the most successful method that concentrates on L.

THE NATURAL APPROACH

It is an attempt at producing acquisition rather than learning, as babies do with their mother tongue. The approach follows three stages:

• Pre-speaking stage: with emphasis on listening comprehension. Techniques include TPR, description of pictures, and a lot of “teacher talk” about the class and the classroom, to which Ss respond with one-word answers to show understanding.
• Early speech production stage: it occurs when Ss recognise about 500 words and feel confident about producing them, although still in one or two-word answers.
• Speech emergence stage: it uses games and activities involving real communication; it focuses on content rather than on form, as problem-solving activities or completing together a chart with daily activities.

Errors are part of the learning process. The T praises the S for his/her try and reconstructs or expands what the S has said, or models a better way of saying it.

The approach attempts at teaching L2 as L1 was acquired. It is a good approach for children and beginners, but higher-level learners can feel demotivated, as they don’t have a sense of progress.

THE LEXICAL APPROACH

Developed by Michael Lewis in 1993, this approach highlights the important role of vocabulary in the learning of an FL. According to Lewis, learning vocabulary (lexis, lexical chunks, and collocations) is crucial because children learn how words are used in a real context. As a result, grammar is not taught openly but unconsciously learnt or deduced.

Lexis is just a technical word that means vocabulary, that is, words isolated.

Lexical chunks are groups of words that often go together, as “once upon a time”, “by the way”, “in my opinion”, or “as a matter of fact”. We learn them unconsciously by constant use.

Constant use is also important to learn English collocations, which are sequences of words that go together and often involve a verb plus a noun. Typical examples of collocations are combinations with make and do. One makes the bed or makes a promise while one does a favour or does her homework. But there are many more cases: feel free, take a seat, or have lunch.

Children enjoy learning new words to name the world around them and expand their vocabulary in both their L1 and L2. This is why this approach widely uses mind maps representing semantic fields.

WHAT IS BILINGUAL EDUCATION?

Bilingual education is the use of two languages as mediums of instruction in a student’s educational career. It is highly beneficial because a bilingual mind is faster and more flexible than a monolingual one. A bilingual person develops his memory, his span of attention, and his ability to solve problems.

AN INTRODUCTION TO CLIL

CLIL means Content and Language Integrated Learning. It is the approach the Comunidad de Madrid Education System has adopted in their Bilingual Schools.

CLIL develops Ss’ communicative competences in a foreign language while they are acquiring content through it. Subjects such as Physical Education, Arts, or Science are taught through an additional language. It is very successful in the learning of languages and other subjects, and in developing a positive ‘can do’ attitude in Ss towards themselves as language learners. In fact, CLIL is often associated to the concept of applying “good practice” to teaching.

Why is CLIL important?

The EU European Commission has been promoting bilingualism and language education since the 1990s, and believes in a multilingual Europe where people can function in two or three languages.

CLIL contributes to a multilingual Europe by:

• Introducing a wider cultural context.
• Preparing students for internationalisation.
• Giving access to an International Certification and enlarging the school profile.
• Improving language competence.
• Preparing students for future studies and/or working life.
• Developing multilingual interests and attitudes.
• Diversifying methods and forms of classroom teaching and learning.
• Increasing the learner’s motivation.

The aims of CLIL are:

• To prepare pupils for life in an international society.
• To enable pupils to develop language skills that emphasise effective communication.
• To give pupils the opportunity to develop subject-related knowledge and learning ability.

Characteristics:

• Learning is improved through increased motivation and the study of natural language seen in context.
• When learners are interested in a topic they are motivated to acquire the necessary language to communicate.

CLIL is based on language acquisition rather than in enforced learning

• Language is seen in real-life situations in which Ss acquire the language. This is natural language development which builds on other forms of learning.
• CLIL develops Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) instead of classic Lower-Order Thinking Skills (LOTS), following Bloom’s taxonomy.

• CLIL develops what Co Doyle defined as the Four C’s at the same time:
  • Content refers to the information related to the subject (Science, Health Care, Physical Education)
  • Communication: Ss have to use the target language to tell their ideas, findings, etc.
  • Cognition refers to the thinking skills Ss have to develop to understand content; usually HOTS.
  • Culture refers to the development of a sense of belonging to a community, from their class to world’s citizenship.

In conclusion:

• CLIL is long-term learning.
• Students become academically proficient in English after being enrolled about 6 years in a good bilingual programme.
• Fluency is more important than accuracy and errors are a natural part of language learning.
• Learners develop fluency in English by using English to communicate for a variety of purposes.
• Learners develop not only LOTS in English but also HOTS, what will allow them to express themselves in a great variety of contexts and situations.

CLIL in Infant Education

• It is still experimental, only a few teachers are applying it at early stages (3-6 years old).
• It is often developed by using 30′ sessions three or four times a week.
• It includes a lot of learning by doing, responding with non-verbal communication and TPR practice.
• The most common content-subject areas are Physical Education and Arts.
• English is introduced orally; no written support is provided, instead visual support is widely given.

Peeter Mehisto suggests this CLIL lesson plan for Primary Education:

1. Start with a warm-up discussion or playing a game that connects with the topic (5 minutes.)
2. Discuss/expose language, content and learning skills outcomes with students (3-5 minutes)
3. Find out what Ss already know, guiding them in organising information and helping them articulate what else they can learn about the topic (8-10 minutes)
4. Have Ss work/look for specific information (5 minutes)
5. Do group or co-operative work to share/compare results and/or use information to create something new (15 minutes)
6. Ask questions to the whole class to encourage Ss to think constructively and assessing their group work (content and language) (5 minutes).
7. Present one group’s outcome and have another group contest or add to the information presented (10 minutes)
8. Review the lesson’s learning outcomes, deciding the extent to which outcomes were achieved and deciding on the next steps (3-4 minutes).

Although this lesson plan was originally designed for Primary Education, it can be easily adapted to Infant Education

MODULE 3 CLASS NOTES

COMMUNICATING ORALLY: LISTENING

Babies discriminate speech sounds from their first months of life. Later on, they are able to listen to the rhythm and melody of language before understanding words. This happens about their first year of life. When toddlers distinguish both sounds and words, they are ready to start producing language.

It is crucial to know that hearing and listening are not the same and we must distinguish them:

Young children are active listeners.

Children often report when they hear an outdoor sound, such as a train, a fire engine or an ambulance. If they live in a rural area, they quickly learn to distinguish the sounds of animals and the environment. No matter whether children live in an urban or a rural area, all of them enjoy listening to tales and songs and teachers should take advantage of this when teaching EFL and cater with plenty of aural material.

In language learning, we distinguish four skills:In Infant Education, most of the EFL teaching must be done by means of oral skills, but written skills can be introduced in the last years of the stage. With Infant School children and with beginners in general, listening is the key skill to develop the other three later, as it is the first to be put to work.

As we have seen when we dealt with TPR, following simple instructions is one of the foundation listening readiness skills that get children ready to develop the other language skills. This needs to promote active listening. To teach children how to listen actively, it is good to keep in mind these golden rules:

Listening skills help children who already have some literacy skills in their L1 transition into English-language literacy because listening skills prepare children for reading in their L1 as well as for reading in an L2.

Listening comprehension uses many of the processes necessary to read and comprehend a story while listening capacity refers to an informal measure of people’s ability to understand or comprehend spoken language in the context of a story being told or read aloud. As a foundation for reading, teachers need to develop both children’s listening comprehension and listening capacity.

Children trained to listen to English-language sounds will have more possibilities to match a sound with a specific letter or cluster, though this does not mean that children who have never been trained to do so cannot be successful as well, but they will have to work harder.

If you think of it, reading is about patterns. Detecting the auditory patterns in a language will better prepare children for the visual patterns in English-language words because they would be able to predict them.

In English, there are lots of one-syllable words that rhyme. Rhymes are an important component of English-language: they appear in songs, finger-plays, and chants. By recognising rhyming words, children will be better prepared to decode and read words that keep a similar pattern, though they should also learn to notice that there are different visual patterns for one auditory pattern:

Some tips for classroom activities based on TPR

Check the complexity of the language being used.

Take into account the interest the topic can arise among children. Make sure to give only one command at a time.

Check visually and wait until everyone has followed a given command to give the next. Use real objects and/or visuals to make meaning clear.

Teacher’s tips for TPR storytelling:

Storytelling works especially well with stories where sentence patterns are repeated once and again.

Use puppets or drawings to illustrate the characters and the settings.

Use drawings or flashcards to illustrate difficult words before telling the story.

After telling the story once, find volunteers to hold puppets, drawings or flashcards to move them when they are mentioned in a second go.

When all children are familiar with the story, provide each child with a drawing, flashcard

or puppet and tell the story for a third time.

Slow down the telling or reading so that all can keep up.

COMMUNICATING ORALLY: SPEAKING

Children play with words and language. As they grow, they integrate words and structures into their real and imaginary play. Play is a vital aspect of a child’s development and language is a part of that play. And very soon, children learn that words can be used as an entertainment.

Children talk while they play either alone or with their partners and they talk when they are engaged in make-believe or pretending activities. This is natural role-playing, as they are practising conversations they have heard from adults or on the TV. It is crucial to know the role of play in L1 acquisition because it will tell us how to deal with it in the EFL teaching. Obviously, speaking goes hand in hand with listening activities.

There are three basic aspects to take into account related to the teaching of speaking:

The mean length of utterances, that is, the average of morphemes a child says in an utterance at a determined age. Very young children produce shorter sentences than older children and their speech is made of shorter words.

Overgeneralization or overregulation of grammar rules. Children apply a grammar rule they have learnt to all possible cases, without noticing that there are many exceptions to each rule.

Articulation of some phonemes which are even difficult for native speakers of English. The following chart shows the ages when English native speakers usually master English- language sounds:

Effective techniques for speaking activities when training young learners include:

Drilling and substitution drilling, as in the Audiolingual Method, but introducing topics by means of pictures, images, or any visual resource.

Choral response and repetitive language as the one found in chants, poems, songs, tales, and finger plays.

Dialogues, with grammatically controlled scripts that they can use in real life, because we must make English alive.

Role-plays based on real and make-believe conversations, as the ones they have when they are playing.

Dialogues and role-plays should be introduced by means of puppets. This gives a chance to reproduce a real conversation and, besides, shy children benefit from this technique as they feel more comfortable speaking to a puppet than to an adult.

Oral Games:

Games are part of playing so they make a great technique to teach EFL. There are many oral games to develop speaking skills. Here you are a selection of easy to play oral games:

Chinese Whispers: good to practise listening and pronunciation. The teacher selects some minimal pairs, like ten/men; pin/pen; kiss/kill. Then, she organises students in rows of 8- 10 children. The 1^st child gets a card -with an image- with one of the selected words, then she whispers the word to the next student and they go on until reaching the last child in the row, who has to say the word aloud.

Simon Says: if a command is preceded by the words “Simon says”, the children should do the appropriate action; if not, they should remain still. The children who perform the action when the teacher doesn’t say “Simon says” are out of the game and they can help the teacher check their classmates to keep on paying attention to the game.

Find the Word: played individually, in pairs or groups. The teacher shows a picture and the children have to say all the names of the objects in the picture beginning with the same letter. The child who says more names is the winner.

I Spy with my Little Eye: played in big group to practise vocabulary and spelling. The teacher says: “I spy with my little eye something beginning with…”b”” and the children have to guess what word the teacher means. The winner takes the teacher’s role.

Guess What I’m Doing: to practice the present continuous. The class is divided into three groups. The teacher tells group A to mimic a sequenced action (frying an egg, brushing the teeth, peeling and eating a banana, etc.). All members of team 1 start mimicking their action. Teams 2 and 3 make them questions and they can only answer yes/no. They have five opportunities to guess. If they fail, team 1 gets 1 score, if a team guesses the answer, they are to mimic next. The team with the highest score wins.

Napoleon or Hot & Cold: to practice interrogatives. The material required are some drawings showing known vocabulary. The teacher poses as Napoleon, with a hand on her chest, as hiding something. The class must guess what the hidden thing is. Napoleon answers “hot” or “cold” if children are getting near to the right answer. (i.e. -“Have you got a pen?”, -“Cold”, -“Have you got a paper?”, -“Hot”, -“Have you got a book”, -“Yes, I’ve got a book”). The child who guesses the answer takes the teacher’s role

Memory: a pack of cards with drawings and another with their written names. Select appropriate semantic fields as fruits, animals, toys, etc. The aim is to collect pairs. After shuffling all cards, display them turned down on the table. In turns, children turn two cards, trying to match a drawing and a word. If they fail, the cards are replaced again in their place, and a new player tries. The child with the most pairs is the winner.

Vocabulary race: children sit with their chairs in a circle. The teacher gives each child a picture card. Every child should hold their card so that the rest of the class can see it. The teacher stands in the middle holding a card. Then the teacher calls two cards. The two children holding these cards race to change seats, while the teacher sits in one of the chairs. The child without a chair is left standing and calls out the next two words.

THE WAY TOWARDS LITERACY: READING

Reading is a set of skills that involves making sense and deriving meaning from the printed word. In order to read, children must decode the printed words and comprehend what they read. For L2 learners, there are three elements which affect reading:

The child’s background knowledge.

The child’s linguistic knowledge of the target language

The strategies and techniques the child uses to tackle the text.

In a global world as ours, one should take into account that English and Spanish are alphabetic languages where a symbol represents a specific letter. Other languages as Chinese or Japanese are ideographic. Another point is that not all languages are read from left to right: Arabic is read from right to left and Chinese is read from top to bottom.

Children who can read in their L1 are at an advantage over children who cannot; because they already understand the key concept that printed symbols represent spoken words. Children who are literate in their L1 know that reading is an activity to get pleasure and information.

By developing strong literacy skills in their L1, it will be easier for young learners to transfer

those skills into the learning of English.

Concepts and skills shown to transfer from L1 literacy to L2 literacy

Print has meaning.

Reading and writing are used for many purposes. Concepts about print:

O Book orientation concepts (how to hold a book, how to turn pages)

O Directionality (how to read a book, left to right, top to bottom) O Letters (letters names, lower case, upper case or capital letters) O Words (composed of letters, spaces, mark boundaries)

Knowledge of text structure.

Use of semantic and syntactic knowledge. Use of cues to predict meaning.

Reading strategies (hypothesising, constructing meaning, etc.)

Confidence in self as a reader.

Díaz-Rico, L. and K. Weed (2010): The Cross-cultural, Language, and Academic Development Handbook

In order to read, we must recognise the symbols that make up words. This is decoding. English has only 26 alphabet symbols but it reaches up to 44 phonemes. This causes problems for Spanish learners, as our language has 27 alphabet symbols and only 25 phonemes. This is why Spanish learners who start reading in English get often frustrated when they try to decode due to this lack of correspondence.

The aim of reading is comprehension. Decoding is not the same as reading. Just because one knows how to pronounce written words correctly, it doesn’t mean that one can really read. Look at the chart below and notice how many of these sentences you can really read.

Reading comprehension refers to reading for meaning, understanding, and entertainment. It involves higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) and it is a very complex process. Teaching young learners how to derive meaning as well as analyse and synthesise what they have read is an essential part of the reading process.

As we said before, people read for two reasons:

Pleasure: reading for pleasure must be taught in the sight of making of it a lifelong learning. If a child enjoys reading in his L1, he will get to learn that it is also pleasurable to read in English.

Information: reading for information is part of daily life. In the street, at home, at school, or at the supermarket, we meet daily with plenty of catchy written information. Children often feel interested in these visual stimuli and try to naturally decode their meaning.

Children need to know that reading is the key that will open the doors of both pleasure and knowledge.

When teaching reading or writing, it is better to use small letters on the blackboard as their design is visually more distinctive. This is because block letters are all the same size while small ones go up and down. This makes them better readable and more easily recognisable.

English speakers are taught how to read by means of Phonics: they learn to distinguish the sound-letter correspondence. Phonics is the teaching of sounds as part of decoding while pronunciation refers only to the way one articulates specific sounds. The purpose of Phonics is to teach green readers that printed letters represent speech sounds heard in words.

Phonics instruction should be based on the English words that children already know in their oral language repertoire. Besides, children should already know how to pronounce the word before they are expected to sound it out or read it.

Obviously, if a non-native teacher does not have a good English pronunciation, it will be more difficult for her to distinguish between English phonemes, but even so she could teach Phonics if she is good at imitating sounds.

Sight words are high frequency words children recognise on sight without decoding the letters. Among these, there are many product brands as Oreo, McDonald’s, or Danonino. Children’s names are also sight words, as they love seeing them printed and reading them.

Print-rich environments encourage children to develop literacy skills. Environmental print is the print that is seen all around us: on signs, billboards, labels, etc. There are plenty of English- language signs around us: shops, petrol stations, billboards, food labels, trademarks, ads, etc. In the classroom, there should be as much environmental print as possible. These are some basic visually print elements in an English classroom:

Labels for classroom vocabulary English-language calendars.

English-language real food packages. Posters and murals

THE WAY TOWARDS LITERACY: WRITING

Writing is a complex combination of process and product.

The process refers to the act of gathering ideas and working with them until they are considered to be clear and comprehensible for readers.

The product is the final piece of writing as it appears published for the reading public (a book, an article, class notes, etc.)

ASSESSING

Look below at the assessment cycle as shown in the drawing to the left. It demonstrates that assessment forms a never-ending cycle that helps us to teach better. The drawing to the right explains how assessment should be.

Remember that there are different kinds of assessment:

As most of the production of young learners is oral, immediate written assessment on their achievements is totally necessary. This is why charts and rubrics are essential tools for the Infant Education teacher. Rubrics should include the following criteria as they all show a student’s overall speaking abilities:

Pronunciation Vocabulary Accuracy Communication Interaction

Fluency

Stickers and badges with smiley faces, stars, rosettes, award certificates, and other visual appraisal material will make children realize about their progress:

Besides, it is very important to make children comfortable with assessment; this is why they must always be given positive oral appraisal, as bravo, excellent, well done, you hit it, very good, very well, etc. These are words that must be said before any correction is made.