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Children as Language Learners
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The child in the example here speaks English as his first language. But we can tell that he is still learning by the errors in his speech. By about four and a half years of age, however, he will have acquired the basic grammar system needed for everyday communication, though there will be some more complex aspects of grammar, e.g. sentence connectors, which he will only finally acquire in his teens. Children learning English as a foreign language also make errors which can be seen as a sign of active learning. These errors give us evidence that both first and second language children are not just imitating what they hear like parrots, but are working out how the language system operates The errors give us windows to look through and see what they have discovered about language so far.
But there is one important difference between children learning their first language and children learning a second language at school second language children have already learned one language. So they bring with them to the language classroom a great deal of experience of language, of life and many other natural abilities which help them to learn and to learn English As teachers, we need to make use of and build on these abilities and characteristics. In this part we will consider:
- Contexts for learning English
- Children as language learners
- How teachers, beliefs about learning affect their teaching
- Ways of observing children,s language learning
The aim of this part is to help you to reflect on your own teaching so that you can consider to what extent you take account of the ways in which children learn and learn languages.