DIDACTICS II - SUMMARY PDF

. INTRODUCTION. CHILDREN’S CHARACTERISTICS “Classroom activities/procedures need to take into account not only of children’s language development but also of factors in their current stage...

. INTRODUCTION. CHILDREN’S CHARACTERISTICS “Classroom activities/procedures need to take into account not only of children’s language development but also of factors in their current stage of social, psychological, physical, emotional and cognitive development.” (Carol Read) TEACHING ENGLISH TO CHILDREN (THE YOUNG LANGUAGE LEARNER) - Wendy Scott There is a big difference between what children of 5 can do and what children of 10 can do. You as the teacher are the only one who can see how far up the ladder your individual pupils are. We are going to draw out attention to the characteristics of the average child, which are relevant for LT. Five to seven years old children They can: - talk about what they are doing - tell you about what they have done or hear - plan activities - argue for sth and tell you why - use logical reasoning - use their imagination - use a wide range of intonation patterns in the L1 - understand direct human interaction Other characteristics of the young language learner (YLL). They: - know that the world is governed by rules - understand situations more quickly than they understand the language used - use language skills even though they are not aware of them - are very logical - have a very short attention and concentration span - sometimes have difficulties in knowing what is fact and what is fiction - understand through the physical world - are often happy playing and working alone but in the company of others - do not always understand what adults are talking about because their worlds are not the same - cannot decide what to learn - love to play, and they learn best when they enjoy themselves - are enthusiastic and positive about learning. It is important to praise them so they can keep their enthusiasm from the beginning. Eight to ten years old children They are relatively mature children with an adult side and a childish side. They: - have very decided views of the world - can tell the difference between fact and fiction - ask questions all the time - rely on the spoken world as well as the physical one to convey and understand meaning - are able to make some decisions - have definite views about their likes and dislikes - have developed a sense of fairness about what happens in the classroom and begin to question teacher’s decisions - are able to work with others Language development They are competent users of their mother tongue and in this connection, they are aware of the main rules of syntax in their own language. By this age they can understand abstracts and symbols, generalise and systematise. There are similarities between learning one’s mother tongue and a foreign language despite the differences in age and time available. It depends on which mother tongue the pupils speak and social and emotional factors. 8 to 10 year olds have some sort of language awareness which they bring to the classroom. What this means for our teaching Words are not enough: Don’t rely on the spoken word only. Most activities for the younger learners should include movement and involve the senses. Demonstrate what you want them to do. Play with the language: Let the pupils talk to themselves. Make up rhymes, sing songs, tell stories. Playing with the L in this way is very common in L1 development and is a very natural stage in the 1st stages of foreign language learning too. Language as language: Becoming aware of language as something separate from the events taking place takes time. The spoken word is often accompanied by other clues to meaning (expressions, movements). We should make full use of these clues. Reading and writing are extremely important for the child’s awareness of L and for their own growth in the language. Variety in the classroom: Since concentration and attention spans are short, variety is a must. Routines: Children benefit from knowing the rules and being familiar with the situation. Have systems, have routines, organise and plan your lessons. Cooperation not competition: Avoid rewards and prizes. Make room for shared experiences. Group the children together whenever possible. This does not mean that they have to work in groups all the time but most children like to have other children around them. Grammar: Very few of your pupils will be able to cope with grammar as such, even at the age of 10 or 11. They may be very aware and clear about the FL, but they are no mature enough to talk about it. Your actual teaching should only include the barest minimum of grammar taught as grammar. The best time to introduce some sort of simple grammar is when a pupil asks for an explanation or when you think he will benefit from learning some grammar. Explanations should be given on an individual/group basis and they should be kept as simple as possible. Assessment: It is always useful for a teacher to make regular notes about each child’s progress. You should be talking to the children regularly about their work and encouraging self-assessment. WORKING WITH YOUNG LANGUAGE LEARNERS - S. Halliwell Young children bring with them to the L classroom an already well-established set of instincts, skills and characteristics which will help them to learn another language. For example, children: - are already very good at interpreting meaning - already have great skill in using limited L creatively - frequently learn indirectly - take great pleasure in finding and creating fun - have a ready imagination - take great delight in talking. Children’s ability to grasp meaning Very young children are able to understand what is being said to them before they understand the individual words. Intonation, gesture, facial expressions, actions and circumstances all help to tell them what the unknown words and phrases probably mean. Children come to primary school with this ability already highly developed. We want to support and develop this skill. We can do this by making sure that we make full use of gesture, intonation, demonstration, actions and facial expression to convey the meaning of what we are saying. Children’s creative use of limited L resources Alongside the ability to perceive meaning, children also show great skill in producing meaningful L from very limited resources. They are creative with grammatical forms and with concepts. Children also create words by analogy, or they even invent completely new words which then come into the family vocabulary. This phenomenon is fundamental to L development. In this process of trying to convey meaning, children may produce temporarily inexact and sometimes inept L, but they usually manage to communicate. In doing so, they are actually building up our grasp of the L because they are actively recombining and constructing it for themselves. This process occurs naturally when the need to communicate has been temporarily intensified by some activity which generates real interaction or calls on the imagination. In order to make the most of the creative L skill that children bring with them, we therefore have to provide them with occasions when: 1) the urge to communicate makes them find some way of expressing themselves; 2) the L demanded by the activity is unpredictable and isn’t just asking the children to repeat set phrases, but is encouraging them to construct. That is why games are useful and important. The fun element creates a desire to communicate and partly because games can create unpredictability. Children’s capacity for indirect learning Even when Ts are controlling an activity closely, children sometimes seem to notice sth out of the corner of their eye and to remember it better than what they were supposed to be learning. L activities which involve children in guessing are a very powerful way of learning phrases and structures, but it is indirect because the mind is engaged with the task and it is not focused on the L. At primary school level the children’s capacity for conscious learning of forms and grammatical patterns is relatively undeveloped. For this reason, it is a good idea to set up real tasks in the L classroom. Real tasks (activities which are not just L exercises), provide the children with an occasion for real L use, and let their subconscious minds work on the processing of L while their conscious minds are focused on the task. Games provide an opportunity for the real use and processing of L; they are a very effective opportunity for indirect learning. Children’s instinct for play and fun Children have an enormous capacity for finding and making fun. When engaged in guessing activities, for example, their personalities emerge in the L use. In this way, they make the L their own. That is why it is such a very powerful contribution to learning. Through their sense of fun and play, the children are living the L for real. Again, we can see why games have such a central role to play. But games are not the only way in which individual personalities surface in the L classroom. There is also the whole area of imaginative thinking. The role of imagination Children delight in imagination and fantasy. In primary school, children are making sense of the world around them through imagination and fantasy and confirm how the world actually is by imagining how it might be different. L teaching should be concerned with real life. But it would be a pity if we were so concerned with promoting reality in the classroom that we forgot that reality for children includes imagination and fantasy. If we accept the role of the imagination in children’s lives we can see that it provides another very powerful stimulus for real L use. We need to find ways of building on this factor in the L classroom too. We want to stimulate the children’s creative imagination so that they want to use the L to share their ideas. The instinct for interaction and talk Of all of the instincts and attributes that children bring to the classroom this is the most important for the L teaching. Its persistence and strength are very much to our advantage in the primary classroom. It is one of the most powerful motivators for using the L. Children need to talk. Without talking they cannot become good at talking. They can learn about the L, but the only way to learn to use it is to use it. So, our job is to make sure that the desire to talk is working for learning not against learning. CHILDREN LEARNING ENGLISH - Moon Children learning English as a FL also make errors which can be seen as a sign of active learning. These errors give us evidence that both 1st and 2nd L children are not just imitating what they hear, but are working out how the L system operates. The errors give us windows to look through and see what they have discovered about L so far. Contexts for learning English Many teachers believe that the ideal situation for children learning a SL is to live in the country where the L is spoken, to be surrounded by it and to acquire it naturally through using it every day. We can identify a number of different conditions which are associated with this ideal learning situation: - Time: Children will have plenty of time for learning English and it can be spread over several years. - Exposure: They are exposed to English all around them, both in and outside school. - A real need for English: They have a need to use English in order to survive on a daily basis. - Variety of input: They are exposed to a wide variety of uses of English: spoken, written, for interacting, for thinking… - Meaningful input: They will receive plenty of meaningful L input through experience of English not as a subject to be learnt but as a means of communication, where the focus is on the meaning, not the form. There are some natural characteristics and abilities children possess which help them to learn a FL: Using L creatively: Pupils actively try to experiment and work out the rules of the L in their heads, though they may not be aware of doing this. The pupils need to feel confident enough to try to use the rules of the L they already knew to experiment. A classroom can provide opportunities to use English in different ways and create a real need for children to use the L. Going for meaning: Children have a good instinct for interpreting the sense or meaning of a situation. They do this through using their knowledge of everyday life and the clues provided by the situation. They work out the meaning 1st and tend not to pay attention to the words that are used to express the meaning. The ability to go for meaning is a very useful one in L learning as it allows children to work out what is happening in a situation and this then helps them to attach meaning to the words used. The use of communication games, drama, project work, storytelling and practical activities in teaching, all allow children to make use of this ability to go for meaning. Ts need to respond initially in ways which build on children’s natural instinct for meaning. Accuracy is important, but it can be dealt with later once children are familiar with the meaning. Using chunks of L: Children learning a FL often use complete phrases of L they have picked up from someone else. These are sometimes called chunks of L because they are learnt and used in speech as whole phrases. Children may not have been taught these chunks formally, but they help them to communicate when they have very little L. Later they may begin to break down these phrases and recombine the words in other ways. We can help to encourage this by getting children to notice common or recurring elements in phrases. Having fun: Children have a great capacity to enjoy themselves. When they are enjoying themselves, they are usually absorbed by the activity and want to continue with it. They are not always aware that they are learning L. This is very positive for L learning, because if children want to continue with an activity for some time, it will give them more exposure to L input and more chance to practise the L. They will also develop more positive attitudes towards English as they will associate it with sth enjoyable and pleasing. Joining in the action: Children are naturally curious and active. They eagerly explore their environment and interact with people, which helps them to construct their understanding of the world they live in. An important way in which they do this is through physical activity and experiencing things at first hand. Physical activities (e.g. making things, action songs, games, rhymes and drama) provide excellent contexts for L learning. The L is closely related to what is happening in the situation and so children can get clues about the meaning from the activity which accompanies the L. The “listen and do” activities are particularly useful for beginners, as children’s listening abilities may be far ahead of their speaking abilities. This type of activity allows pupils to be actively learning and participating but does not force them to speak or produce L till they are ready. It provides them with exposure to meaningful input. Talking their heads off: If they are engaged in an interesting activity, they will talk their heads off happily. Children's strong desire to communicate means that they immediately try to use the new L and so get more practice. This is very useful for L learning because it means that pupils will get plenty of practice in using the L. Feeling at home: Pupils have feelings about L learning, they often feel quite frightened, embarrassed or insecure about learning a new L. As Ts, we need to be very sensitive to pupil’s feelings as this may affect their motivation and attitude to learning the L. If they feel at home in the classroom, they are more likely to participate and take risks. Creating conditions which support L learning Children will only be able to make use of these abilities if we create the right kind of learning environment in which they can draw on them. This means we need to consider how to: - create a real need and desire to use English - create a friendly atmosphere in which children can take risks and enjoy their learning - help children to notice the underlying pattern in L - provide sufficient time for English - provide exposure to varied and meaningful input - provide opportunities for children to experiment with their new L - provide plenty of opportunities to practise and use the L in different contexts - provide feedback on learning BUILDING PROGRAMS ON A SOLID FOUNDATION - Curtain and Pesola Linguistic and psychological theories help to explain children’s seemingly effortless second-language acquisition and to provide insights that can make the classroom a better place for such language acquisition to take place. SECOND-LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Second-language acquisition theory may help to explain why children acquire languages more quickly and with much less effort than their parents when placed in a local school in the second-language environment. They are surrounded by language that is made meaningful because of the context and the way the teachers speak to them. They are given time to sort out the language that they hear and understand, until they are ready to use it for their own expressive purposes. Their parents, on the other hand, learn rules and attempt to apply them later. For Krashen, the children would be acquiring the language and the parents would be learning it. (Acquisition vs Learning → the 1st hypothesis of second-language acquisition). A second hypothesis, the Natural Order Hypothesis, suggests that the structures of a language will be acquired in approximately the same order. Monitor Hypothesis: Krashen’s third hypothesis describes the functions of the monitor. The monitor is a trigger in the brain that applies rules that have been learned in order to accurately produce a message in the target language. It makes the speaker aware of a mistake after it has been made or it triggers awareness of the error in time to present its being spoken aloud. For the monitor to work effectively, the speaker must know the rule, have time to think of the rule and apply it. Input Hypothesis: This has the most direct application to the elementary school foreign language classroom. This hypothesis suggests that the most important factor in the amount of language acquired by a learner is the amount of comprehensible input to which the learner is exposed. Comprehensible input is understood to be the amount of language which the learner can fully understand, plus just a little more: i + 1. The i represents the level at which the student is now; +1 is just a little beyond. For Krashen the learner must always be challenged but never to the point of frustration. The Input Hypothesis provides a powerful reason for the exclusive use of the target language for all classroom purposes. However, it is not enough. It must be used in such a way that the message is understood by the student (through the use of gestures, examples, illustrations, experiences and caretaker speech). The teacher should develop strategies for making the target language comprehensible to the students. The hypothesis has brought new attention to the importance of listening skills. They give learners the opportunity to associate meanings with language and they can give their full attention to understanding the messages, without the pressure to respond immediately. Affective Filter Hypothesis: Children and adults alike are known to resist learning when learning is unpleasant or in a punitive environment. Students’ have an ability to learn more readily those things they want to learn. The affective filter is a filter that the brain erects to block out second-language input. The filter goes up in the presence of anxiety or low self-confidence or in the absence of motivation. The filter goes down and the input can come through when motivation is high, when a student is self-confident, and when the learning takes place in a relatively anxiety-free environment. Conditions for Second-Language Acquisition According to Krashen, language acquisition takes place most effectively when the input is meaningful and interesting to the learner, when it is comprehensible (i+1), and when it is not grammatically sequenced. Michael Long suggests that acquisition takes place best in a setting in which meaning is negotiated through interaction, so that the student has influence on the message being communicated. There must be early attention to providing students with the ability to communicate messages such as these: “I don’t understand”, “Could you please repeat that?”, “Could you please speak more slowly?”, etc. Comprehensible Output Swain has taken Krashen’s idea. She suggests that students acquire language most meaningfully when they also have the opportunity for comprehensible “output”. They need to have a setting in which their attempts at communication are valued and shaped to make them acceptable and understandable, through communicative means of correction. Direct error correction may inhibit their willingness to speak. Use of language In the classroom designed to encourage second-language acquisition, there is an emphasis on communication. The teacher provides sts with an environment in which they are surrounded by messages in the target language that communicate relevant information in language they are able to understand. Part of creating comprehensible input consists of using strategies for making the message understood: motherese, caretaker speech, foreigner talk, etc. Characteristics of this speech: a slower rate of speech; most distinct pronunciation; shorter, less complex sentences; more rephrasing and repetition; more frequent meaning checks with the hearer to make sure that he or she is understanding; use of gesture and visual reinforcement; greater use of concrete referents; scaffolding → the teacher surrounds the learner with language, treating sts as if they were actually participants in a dialogue. Paying attention to the brain The study of the brain in cognitive psychology has resulted in a significant shift in orientation away from the behaviourist principles. Rote learning, habit formation, and observable outcomes are being replaced by an emphasis on meaningfulness, metacognition, and process. For the behavioural psychologists, the student is considered to be a relatively passive subject, to be manipulated through reinforcement techniques and drill. The cognitive psychologist, in contrast, sees student as active participants in the learning situation, controlling and shaping their own learning processes. In the behaviourist classroom the student responds to stimuli and reinforcement, while in a classroom based on cognitive psychology, the stds’ own internal motivation drives the learning process. Information is best learnt and retained if it is made meaningful to students. Cognitive Psychology Glover and Bruning have summarised six major principles of cognitive psychology: Students are active processors of information. Learning is most likely to occur when information is made meaningful to students. How students learn may be more important than what they learn. Cognitive processes become automatic with repeated use. Metacognitive skills can be developed through instruction. The most enduring motivation for learning is internal motivation. There are vast differences in students’ information-processing abilities. Elementary and middle school foreign language teachers can apply these principles in the classroom as they engage their students in meaningful situations and make them full participants in the communication of the classroom. They can work together with teachers across the curriculum to help children become aware of the process of language acquisition and to enjoy their own progress. Brain-Based Learning Leslie Hart takes the characteristics of the brain as a basis for organizing instructions. The brain thrives on high volumes of input - the raw material contained in the confusion of daily experience. Learning is the process of extracting meaningful patterns from the rich input of the environment and snapping them into a program: a fixed sequence of behaviours for accomplishing some intended objective. Since each individual‘s learning style is different, the effort to prepattern the raw material of learning can be helpful for only a limited number of students. Learning is best served by providing students with meaningful purposes and rich and varied contexts. This “brain-based” approach incorporates elements such as use of spoken and written language for actual communication purposes and addressing learning to immediate and later uses, not to testing or examinations. Activities of Left and Right Hemispheres James Asher (1986) developed his Total Physical Response (TPR) approach to language teaching as a response to the different tasks performed by the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Sts respond with physical activity to increasingly complex teacher commands, and they are not expected to speak until they feel ready. TPR was intended to encourage the use of right-hemisphere processes, which are open to new habits that foreign language study requires. Others have advocated the use of music, rhythm, drama, and games as methods to stimulate the right hemisphere and thus facilitate language acquisition. WHOLE LANGUAGE Children are learning to use oral and written language for meaningful purposes in whole language classrooms. The whole language approach to language development affirms a whole new set of principles for schooling. Beliefs about whole language may be examined in three categories: Beliefs about language: Language takes several forms: oral, written and sign. None is derived from or dependent on the other, and they all share the same basic characteristics and can develop simultaneously. Language is a supersystem made up of interdependent and inseparable subsystems. Learning rules of the language separately is not the same thing as learning language. Language is social; the purpose of its use is determined by the user. Language is predictable, and the function of the predictability is to make sense, to find meanings. Language is aesthetic, its musical and poetic qualities are always present and available. Beliefs about language development: Language is learned through actual use to achieve personal purposes. It is not learned through drill and practice for its own sake. Language learning is both natural and social. It is natural in that it is a by-product of some important use to which language is put. It is social in that it occurs through social interaction and develops in order to facilitate the interaction. There are universals in the underlying process of language learning. Learners constantly test hypotheses and make errors; learning occurs through actual, purposeful use. Beliefs about learning: Learning is a social process; interaction with the environment and collaboration in learning bring learners to levels of understanding and skill development that would have been unattainable through individual efforts in isolation. Learning is best achieved through direct involvement and personal experience. It is an active process in which learners construct meanings rather than passive activity in which teachers transmit information. It is the learner’s purpose and intentions that drive learning, not the teacher’s goals for the learner. Learning involves hypothesis testing. Language use is not an end in itself; language is used as a tool for important, meaning-filled learning. This learning tends to cut across subject content lines, with much flexibility built in for students to follow their own interests. Instruction is frequently organized thematically rather than according to the subjects of the traditional curriculum. FRAMEWORK FOR CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT This framework is an effort to reorient the planning process in light of new understanding of the learner and learning process, considering the role of foreign languages within the elementary and middle school and the goals of language learning in a long sequence instruction. It is designed to guide decisions encountered in the process of curriculum development and as a starting point for curriculum and program evaluation. The organization of the framework reflects a dynamic relationship among panning elements that are in constant and continuously changing interaction with one another. Elements of this framework: → Learner and Teacher Characteristics: all elements of the curriculum should take into account the developmental level of the learners and the presence of various learning styles. The linguistic and experimental background of the learners should also be taken into consideration. The teacher’s language skills and experiences with the target culture will have an important influence on decisions. Areas of personal interests and enthusiasm will be natural choices for emphasis within the curriculum and the daily lessons. → Thematic Centre: it is the starting point for curriculum development. Choice of a thematic centre is based on interests of the pupils and the teacher, relationship to the goals of the curriculum for the grade level or age of the class, etc. The focal point for a thematic centre may be a topic from the general school curriculum or it may be drawn from the culture of the target language. The curriculum for a school year consists of several thematic centres, each related to the others by systematic reinforcement of the unit just completed, and by careful preparation for and transition to the units that follow. Language functions and basic vocabulary are encountered and reinforced from unit to unit, due to the spiral character of the general elementary school curriculum. Curriculum components: Three major groups of outcomes give substance to the thematic unit: Outcomes for language in use, or functional language outcomes: this is the language necessary for dealing appropriately with the theme. Subject content outcomes: this is the reinforcement and extension of concepts and goals from the general elementary school curriculum. Culture outcomes: these reflect experiences with patterns of thinking and behaviour that are distinctly representative of communities in which the target language is used. Making choices in these three areas and maintaining a balance among them is the fundamental work of curriculum development. Each of these three categories for decision making may overlap with the others in significant ways. Once the content and outcomes for the thematic unit have been selected, the next tier of decisions can be made: 1. the assessment strategies that will be used to determine whether the outcomes have been met. Assessment is descriptive and it serves as a tool for reporting each child’s development and process; 2. the vocabulary necessary for interacting with the content of the unit; 3. the grammatical structures necessary for dealing appropriately with the unit; the teaching of grammatical structures takes place through usage and practice, rather than through analysis and drill; 4. the materials and activities that will be used to advance the development of the unit; 5. the classroom setting in which the teaching and learning will take place. Each of the decisions in this framework interacts with all earlier and subsequent decisions to create a dynamic planning process that can be responsive to the particular environment of each individual setting. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LEARNER Learners of any age differ from one another in significant ways: individuals may learn best through listening or reading; they may learn more easily alone or within a small group; they may require heavy visual reinforcement or learn better through verbal explanations. Children and adolescents, however, differ from older learners in certain patterned and predictable ways as they progress through stages of development. An understanding of these general developmental characteristics is essential for the elementary and middle school foreign language teacher. STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT - Piaget Piaget identified four stages of cognitive and affective development in childhood and adolescence. The child develops cognitively through active involvement with the environment, and each new step builds on and becomes integrated with previous steps. They are: 1. The stage of sensory-motor intelligence (0-2): during this stage, behaviour is primarily motor. The child does not yet internally represent events and “think” conceptually, though “cognitive” development is seen as schemata are constructed. 2. The stage of preoperational thought (2-7): this stage is characterized by the development of language and other forms of representation and rapid conceptual development. Reasoning is prelogical or semi logical, and children tend to be very egocentric. Children often focus on a single feature of a situation at a time. 3. The stage of concrete operations (7-11): during these years, the child develops the ability to apply logical thought to concrete problems. Concrete experiences help children to understand new concepts and ideas. Using language to exchange information becomes much more important than in earlier stages, as children become more social and less egocentric. 4. The stage of formal operations (11-15/adulthood): during this stage, the child’s cognitive structures reach their highest level of development. The child becomes able to apply logical reasoning to all classes of problems, including abstract problems without concrete references. The thinking skills of most children in elementary and middle school foreign language programs are at the concrete operational stage, and experience plays a major role in all learning. Teachers should share their world and learn to work with it. LAYERS OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT - Egan Egan describes development in terms of the characteristics that determine how the learner gains access to the world. He thinks of educational development as a process of accumulating and exercising layers of capacity for engaging with the world. As individuals develop, they add new layers of sophistication without shedding the qualities characteristic of earlier layers. Each stage contributes something vital and necessary to the mature adult’s ability to make sense of the world and human experience. → The Mythic Layer: Ages 4/5 to 9/10 Years: The primary task is to begin to understand the world in terms of their own vivid mental categories. Those categories are emotional and moral, rather than rational and logical. Emotional categories have primary importance. Fundamental moral and emotional categories are used to make sense of experience: good/bad, love/hate, happy/sad. Simple binary opposites provide the easiest access to a subject. (Understanding of hot and cold precedes the concept of warm) The story form is the most powerful vehicle for instruction; it incorporates the categories and processes used by the child in understanding and interpreting the world: a beginning, a middle, an end; binary oppositions; absolute meaning; emotional and moral categories. → The Romantic Layer: Ages 8/9 to 14/15 Years: The search for the transcendent within reality, the need to develop a sense of romance, of wonder and awe. Children develop initial concepts of otherness, of an outside world different and distinct from the world within that is perceived as potentially threatening. They confront the task of developing a sense of their distinct identity. Students learn best when new information embodies qualities that transcend the challenges posed by daily living in the real world, such as courage, nobility, genius energy or creativity; the romantic learner seeks out the limits of the real world, they are fascinated with the extremes. They tend to prefer stories that incorporate realistic details and heroes and heroines, at the same time, so that the learner can identify with these, who embody the qualities necessary to succeed in a threatening world. Learning can be successfully organised if something far from their experience is presented but related somehow. → The Philosophic Layer: Ages 14/15 to 19/20 Years: The key task is developing the capacity to generate “general schemes,” the ability to generalize and organize information. Students begin to understand the world as a unit, of which they are part. The focus is on the general laws by which the world works. Meaning of individual pieces of information is derived from their place within the general scheme. They become confident as they know the meaning of everything. The teacher guides stds in the process of acquiring knowledge to feed the development of their general schemes, and then elaborating their schemes to best organize their particular knowledge. → The Ironic Layer: Age 19/20 Through Adulthood: A major task is to control the capacities of all previous layers. These learners are in the best position to develop an objective mental image of the world. The learner recognizes that the general schemes of the philosophic layer are necessary tools for imposing meaning on particulars. If the scheme does not serve, it is discarded and another is used instead. Particular knowledge is dominant rather than the general scheme. The ironic layer is made up of contributions from all previous layers, under the control of this key ironic perception. The ironic learner is the mature adult learner. CHARACTERISTICS OF ELEMENTARY AND MIDDLE SCHOOL LEARNERS → Preschool Students (ages 2 to 4): These students are in a sensitive period for language development. They absorb language effortlessly and are adept imitators of speech sounds. Because they are very self-centred, they don’t work well in groups and respond well to the activities and learning situations that are related to their interests and experiences. Although they have a short attention time, they have patience for repetition of the same activity or game. → Primary Students (ages 5 to 7): Kindergarten and Grades 1 and 2: Most of these children are still preoperational and they learn best with concrete experiences and immediate goals. New concepts and vocabulary are more meaningful when presented as pairs of binary opposites. Children like to learn things in their own world, they also have a vivid imagination and respond well to stories of fantasy. They need to know how to feel about something in order to learn it well. Children learn through oral language: they are capable of developing good oral skills, pronunciation and intonation when they have a good model. They learn through dramatic play, role play, and use of story form. They need to have a great variety of activities, they should participate physically. Teachers should give very structured and specific directions and build regular routines and patterns into the daily lesson plan. → Intermediate Students (ages 8 to 10): Grades 3, 4, and 5: Children at this age are at a maximum of openness to people and situations different from their own experience. They begin to understand cause and effect. They can work well in groups and begin a more systematic approach to language learning, but they still need concrete experiences as a starting point. Children may resist partner situations with children of the opposite sex. They continue to benefit from imagination, fantasy, binary opposite and real-life heroes and heroines who overcome the challenges of life. → Preadolescent Students (ages 11 to 14): Grades 6, 7, and 8: Students are undergoing more dramatic changes than experienced at any other time in life. They must learn to deal with an emerging sexuality in a changing body, finding adult intellectual tools, rapidly shifting interests, a need to rework relationships with adults, etc. They need the opportunity for board exploration and an introduction to academic disciplines. GENEVIEVE ROTH. CHILDREN AND EDUCATION. TEACHING AS STORYTELLING - Kieran Egan Education and the mental life of young children Some characteristics of mental life in oral cultures The focus on education has tended towards the neglect of certain distinctive features of children’s mental life. In particular, the importance of children’s “orality”. In oral cultures there are no ways of maintaining the kind of artificial or cumulative “memory”, and associated forms of thought, common in literate cultures. Such techniques as rhyme and rhythm are important in communicating the culture’s lore, because they aid the effectiveness of its memorization. The most important of all the techniques developed in oral cultures is perhaps the story. This is because the story can not only convey the lore of the culture but can do so in a way that encourages emotional commitments to it. So rhyme, rhythm, meter, formulae, metaphor, and story are techniques of considerable social importance for the preservation of the memory and sense of identity, and also social relationships, economic activities, and so on, of oral cultures. It seems we might reasonably apply this same insight to our own childhood in Western cultures. The development of rationality might be better understood if it is seen to grow out of, and on, our “poetic natures”, or our orality. We need to see the positive features of orality and try to ensure that they are not suppressed in the development of literate rationality. Some characteristics of the oral culture of childhood Children are able to see the world with a glory and freshness that at length, as we mature, fades “into the light of common day”. The educational problem is the danger, in initiating the child into the inheritance of human understandings, of losing touch with the vivid freshness of childhood perception. What I would like to do now is focus briefly on just a few of the features of young children’s mental life where we can see the results of their everyday imaginative activity in their own oral culture. Perhaps easiest might be to consider the kinds of stories that children find so readily engaging. If we examine the structure of the classical fairy stories their most evident feature is that they are built on simple but powerful abstract concepts like good/bad, security/fear, courage/cowardice, and so on. What seems to be crucial in making the classic fairy tales accessible and engaging to young children is that their contents are articulated on powerful abstract concepts that children already understand. It is clearly a mistake to assume that because young children do not readily articulate abstract concepts that they have not already by ages four or five grasped the most powerful and abstract concepts we ever learn. A second immediately obvious feature of the kinds of stories young children are readily engaged by is the peculiar nature of their characters. These are hardly the stuff of their everyday experience. The underlying abstract structures of children’s stories tend to come in binary oppositions – such as good/bad, big/little, and so on. A third prominent feature of children’s mental life concerns the role of the story form in general. Why are stories so engaging to young children, and how is it that they recognize, and begin to generate their own, stories so very early – commonly as young as two or three years old? What is a story? A narrative unit that can fix the affective meaning of the elements that compose it. It has a beginning that sets up a conflict or expectation, a middle that complicates it, and an end that resolves it. The defining feature of stories, as distinct from other kinds of narratives, is that they orient our feelings about their contents. The engaging quality of stories seems tied up with the fact that they end. The story fixes how we should feel, and this provides us with a rare security and satisfaction. A fourth element of young children’s oral cultural life is their easy use and understanding of metaphor. Metaphor does not reflect the world, but is crucial to generating novel conceptions of it. It develops children’s imagination by enabling them to understand one thing seeing it in terms of another. For a brief fifth element of children’s oral culture, we have greatly underestimated the importance of humour in young children’s intellectual life. Jokes are better seen as expressing a range of children’s most active intellectual abilities, and is the proper foundation for the development of logic and a richer rationality. Conclusion The prevailing conceptions of young children’s mental life derived from educational theorists and researchers has tended to represent children’s thinking as confused and lacking in the skills of Western rationality. Their illiteracy is conceived as the first hurdle to overcome in the lengthy and difficult process of education. While the image of young children as tabulae rasae, or empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge, is not any longer prominent in educational discourse, we continue to characterise young children’s mental life in terms of the absence of those developments and knowledge that constitute the mature condition. If we were instead to consider young children’s mental life in terms of positive orality we would be compelled to see education as involving something of a trade-off, and we might also be persuaded to give serious thought to how we might preserve the skills of orality as far as possible. We would also begin to reconceive what might be the most important educational tasks for early childhood. First would be the stimulation and development of their orality, respecting their intellectual ability. This means focusing on the use of such cognitive tools (mental devices that help us think and learn more effectively) as we have considered above as constituents of orality – rhyme, rhythm, metre, proverbs and formulae, metaphor, humour and the story form. When teachers use this set of cognitive tools to structure and teach the subjects in the curriculum, the knowledge is shaped into forms in which young children are predisposed by oral language to learn it and the lessons become more meaningful and interesting to students. Second, the general shape of the early childhood curriculum might be characterised as constituted of the great stories of the world. The world they are to make sense of has a vivid and dramatic history, and I think we can relatively easily reconceive our primary curriculum in terms of telling children the story of science and technology, the story of mathematics, the story of history, the story of art, and the stories of all our ways of sense-making. Third, we reconceive teachers, not as increasingly de-skilled, purveyors of prepared texts, worksheets and tests, but rather as our culture’s story-tellers. The stories that constitute our culture are the stories of our science, mathematics, history and so on. These are terrific and dramatic stories. If we reconceive teaching as story-telling, we might begin to devise planning techniques where a lesson is not regarded as a set of objectives to be attained but as a good story to be told. In our cultural history rationality did not displace myth but rather grew out of it and on it. If we wish to develop or preserve a rich rationality, we might attend more keenly to this historical development, and see that it can be sensibly reflected in our individual development. We can preserve the vividness and meaning of experience, and the sense of participation in nature that oral cultures were so good at stimulating, and that we seem predisposed to develop in early childhood, if we become more sensitive to positive orality. The light of common day can be enriched by the imagination. But we have to be careful that our educational schemes do not obliterate it, but rather set themselves first to evoke, stimulate, and develop it as the foundation of education. CHARACTERISTICS OF STORIES 1) They are based on powerful abstract concepts that children already understand. 2) The concepts and the characters appear in binary oppositions. 3) They have a fixed structure: beginning (sets up a conflict or expectation), a middle (shows a complication) and an end (in which the problem is resolved). 4) It transmits content but it also encourages emotional commitment to it. Children understand the world in emotional categories. 5) It uses metaphors. These develop imagination, enabling people to understand one thing by seeing it in terms of another. 6) It reflects the characteristics of oral cultures (the ones that do not have a writing system) where knowledge had to be transmitted orally from generation to generation through memorization. Teaching implications: a- Stimulate children’s orality and respect their intellectual ability. b- Change the curriculum to use the story form. c- Teachers should become story-tellers. d- Help students become literate and rational without losing their imagination and the vivid freshness of childhood perception. SIR KEN ROBINSON: DO SCHOOLS KILL CREATIVITY? Ken Robinson says he has an interest in education and that people are also interested in this subject in the same way as in religion and money. Children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. This shows the unpredictability of education. He says that children have a great capacity for innovation and that creativity is as important as literacy. He says that if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never never come up with something original. However, being wrong is not the same as being creative. By the time they get to be adults, they have lost that capacity, they have become afraid to be wrong. For adults, mistakes are the worst thing you can make. We stigmatise mistakes. As a result, we are creating people out of their creative capacities. Hierarchy of subjects every education system in the world has according to Ken: - Mathematics - Languages - Humanities - Arts: Art Music Drama Dance The whole purpose of public education around the world is to produce university professors, who look at their bodies as a form of transport for their heads. Public education is based on the concept of academic ability because in the 19th century it had to meet the needs of industrialism. However, the whole world is engulfed in a revolution today. Ken Robinson characterises intelligence as diverse, dynamic and distinct.. SUPPORTING CHILDREN’S LEARNING. Children need support for language learning, i.e. assistance to carry out learning activities that they would not yet be able to do unaided. Providing support helps children to gain the knowledge, ability and confidence to eventually function more independently. It is also one of the ways in which we maintain the conditions which aid language learning. There are different types of support which teachers can use to help their pupils as three main types: 1) Language: This refers to all the things the teacher does through speech or gesture which provide support for children in carrying out a learning activity: using language at children’s level, eg. choosing words and structures they will be able to understand (simple grammatical structures, coordination rather than subordination, high-frequency words, less slang and idioms, use of names of referents instead of preforms) adjusting one’s language to help children understand, eg. repeating, rephrasing, extending what the child says, asking yes-no questions, polar questions, checking understanding, explaining a term that the speaker doubts the child will know) adjusting one’s speed and volume, using pausing to give children time to think, slower rate, clear articulation, higher pitch, diminished contractions, longer pauses, extra volume, exaggerated intonation. using gestures, actions, eg. spreading your arms wide to show that something is big, a nod of the head for “yes”, facial expressions, making noises, etc. 2) Techniques/Resources: This refers to all the techniques and resources the teacher uses to help pupils to do the activities: moving from known to new, from concrete to abstract, eg. showing a toy bus and later talking about a bus using only words. focusing on things, actions, events which children can see, eg Look at these puppets you made. What colour are they? Do they have sad or happy faces? using practical “hands-on” activities in which language is supported by action, eg. action games, making paper animals. giving children a clear and understandable purpose for doing activities, eg. Let’s find out what happens at the end of the story. revising vocabulary or language needed for activities. providing language prompts or models to help pupils carry out the activity, eg. a “fill in the gap” activity with words or phrases to choose from, flash cards, wall charts containing the words needed. giving clear feedback on pupils’ responses and on learning activities. using visual support to help pupils understand a story or dialogue, eg. pictures, objects providing a clear situation or context for language activities, which is familiar to children providing opportunities to learn through a variety of senses, eg. hearing, seeing, touching, feeling smelling, moving. demonstrating and modelling for children how to do an activity. creating activities which are interesting to children, eg. games, drama, making things and personalizing activities so they relate to children’s own experiences. 3) Children themselves: The support that children provide for each other is so obvious that we often forget to acknowledge it. Children can get support by working with other children: learning by watching other children (as models) learning by listening to and getting help from other children (as tutors) learning by practising with other children (as partners) SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON 1ST AND 2ND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION The kind of interaction and contexts from which young children will receive the most effective support for learning a second language has not yet been the subject of much research but it would seem that present knowledge of first language learning provides insights which can guide those who seek to help young children learn a second language. From studies of 1st language acquisition, it is clear that both children and parents intuitively develop strategies (described in the chart below) that promote acquisition of the 1st language and there is also some evidence to suggest that young children will apply the same strategies when learning a 2nd language. For the most part, research confirms that the linguistic and cognitive processes of 2nd language learning in children are in general similar to 1st language processes. CHILDREN ↔ PARENTS (innate mechanisms) (interaction) (talk to and with children) Hear language again and again; then try to say it Talk about a concrete present situation themselves (learn to comprehend before speaking) Imitation, repetition, formulaic speech and Talk paralleled by gesture and action, tone of voice incorporation. and stress. Need to communicate, take part in social context. “motherese” or “caretaker speech” Communicate their wants by reaching and pointing, Interpret and respond to the meaning of children’s pushing away and rejecting, smiling, frowning and utterances and provide models for children to hear. crying. Establish a small range of first words between 12 Attach meaning to the baby’s sounds, forming first and 18 months; from the age of 2 they begin to put “words”. words together. Produce one-word utterances to communicate a Encourage the child to try again by repeating words range of meanings followed by two-word utterances clearly. with certain regularities and rules of word order. Need to see and hear the language being used Incorporate the word the child says in a colloquial (language learning is experiential, not analytical). complete phrase. Follow a natural order through which grammatical Negotiate meaning rather than correct. structure develops. Use their first words in combination with gestures; If a child wrongly names an object, they give the use vocalization to call attention rather than appropriate name. transmit information. Communicative competence appears before linguistic competence. At 2 years of age they learn to coordinate Fill out the child’s telegraphic utterance and then vocalizations to serve the purposes of address the meaning. communication (true language). Two types of first words: names of concrete objects Reformulate ill-formed utterances. (things they manipulate) and words for social interactions. Concept development and language development Stimulate children to think and communicate are interdependent; they only talk about what they further ideas. know. 12-15 months telegraphic speech which increases in Introduce alternative structures and ways of grammatical difficulty (eg. Statements before expressing similar meaning. questions). Imitate only the utterances that express their own Involve their young children in conversations. communicative intentions. Make mistakes because there is an active process of Provide positive affective feedback. rule formation. TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS Knowing how children learn their first language can help us teach them a second language. Babies: Young children: - hear voices from the time they are born - say what they hear others saying - respond to the voices of their mother, father, or - pick up the accent of those around them. carer - listen to a lot of sound - play with sounds and practise making sounds - begin to associate the sounds with what they can see and understand - begin to use language to interact with others and get what they want. Most mothers talk a lot to their children. Parents as carers talk to help the development of their child’s language. Teachers in school can do the same with their learners. Young children will: - only acquire the language they hear around them - need to hear a lot of English - look on you - their teacher - as their new carer - listen to you and try to make sense of what you say - sound like the people they listen to Helping children learn a new language Use English in class as the main language for Talk a lot in English to your pupils. Talk about: communication. - where things are Use gestures, actions and pictures to help children - pictures or things children can see understand. - what you and your pupils are doing in class Children often need to talk in order to learn. - what you want your pupils to do next. Recast in English what children say to you in their Remember: mother tongue. - the more English the children hear, the Answer children in English as much as possible. more they will learn Use their mother tongue for support when you do - they will learn gradually - they won’t say a new activity or if no one understands. everything perfectly to start with. Encourage them by responding positively. YOUNG CHILDREN LEARNING LANGUAGES - Brumfit, Moon and Tongue An intriguing paradox in the development of young children is their ability to establish their L1 at a time when they are unable to understand anything about the system which they come to use with such competence. There are many documented cases of young children learning to use a SL when they are in close contact with a speaker(s) who uses it. There are also reported cases where children develop the use of two languages almost simultaneously in a home where two languages are in daily use between members of the family. From experiences of learning other languages at later ages, there is much that indicates that learning language is not easy. Such observations had led to a view that the early years of childhood provide an optimum period for learning languages and many argue that it is indeed a critical period. The fact that young children learn their L1 with such speed and competence must mean that if the process can be better understood it should be possible to design experiences through which children learn a second language in the same way as they learn their L1. Both social and cognitive development depend upon children being drawn into interaction with others and both are set on course in the very early days as parents and other carers talk to children while attending to their needs. Physical handling is generally accompanied by aural and visual stimulation. The parent’s voice, facial expression and gestures call out responses from the baby. As the baby turns towards the source of the sound the speaker’s face comes into view. The movements of the speaker’s face (particularly of the mouth and eyes) attract the baby’s attention and the speaker’s face is brought into focus. In this way parents and other become familiar and recognition is evident in the baby’s responses. Research has examined the emergence of babies’ smiles and vocal responses to parents’ talk, showing the way in which a conversation-like quality in the exchanges develops and how such “conversations” gradually extend. At this stage we can see the pleasure babies find in being able to produce particular sounds at will and how the obvious pleasure of those around them encourages them to repeat sounds deliberately and spurs then on to further accomplishments. The interaction that takes place through gesture, facial expression and action is also important. Parents also use facial expressions, gesture, action, tone of voice and stress intuitively to support the meaning of what they say. It is through such interaction that meaning becomes attached to a small range of sounds a baby can produce. As children’s physical development grows rapidly, more and more of the concrete world around them comes within their grasp and investigation as they begin to crawl and then to walk. More and more information becomes available through sight, hearing and touch. As children seek to impose structure on their world, words not only serve to encapsulate meaning but when used by others also direct attention to aspects of experience not yet differentiated. They urge to impose structure on the language they hear, which is reflected in the L they attempt to use as they begin to talk. Most children establish a small range of first words between the ages of 12 and 18 months. And respond appropriately to a wider range used by others, suggesting that they have attached meaning. From the age of 2 years, they begin to put words together and so move towards discovering the system of their L1. The sequence of development of the first language The early stages of language were found to be characterised by 1-word utterances used to communicate a range of meanings that were differentiated by intonation and gesture. As 2-word utterances appeared there were found to be regularities that could be identified in the utterances of all children. These early speech patterns were described by Brown and Fraser as telegraphic. Braine recognised 2 classes of words in 2-word utterances which he described as open and pivotal according to the way in which they were related to one another, and which indicated that rules of word order were being applied. Several studies have attempted to describe aspects of the development of language during the early stages. The majority of these studies focused on the emergence of grammatical structures. Studies on children’s development of grammar tend to focus on the use of negatives and questions, the responses to questions, the development of verb and noun inflections and the development of locative terms. A further development was to examine the use of particular morphemes and to identify the order in which they appeared. Roger Brown examined the use of 14 morphemes and showed that although the rate of development varied between children, the route through which they developed was common to all. But this development seems to occur whatever L is being acquired. In one study, the early stages of L development in 40 different Ls were examined and similarities were identified which supported the view that all children adopt similar principles in their attempts to differentiate the rules of the language they are acquiring. It seems that children use certain structures before others, that there are similar stages in the development of many structures, and that there are common features in the development of a L1 whatever language is being acquired. The evidence of such common features in early language learning led to the theory that young children’s ability to develop the use of language is a result of innate cognitive and linguistic abilities which together operate as a Language Acquisition Device and account for common characteristics in early language learning whatever the language used, whatever experiences are available to the child and whatever the context. Children’s experiences of the use of language Parents’ talk most frequently refers to objects present and to distinctive action, so the language used has a present context and reference has concrete illustration. Other characteristics are often the use of higher pitch of voice, slower and more clearly articulated speech, grammatical modification or simplification and frequent repetition. Such behaviour helps the child to identify the “adult” form. Motherese operates as a set of intuitive language lessons for young children and urges them towards communicative competence. It seems that parents look intuitively for signs from which they can judge what a child is ready for and is able or soon will be able to understand. Learning to communicate through talking Recent research supports the view that it is the latter that provides the basic motivation, and that the intuitive help with acquiring linguistic structures is the result of attempts at negotiating rather than any determination to correct the child’s use of language. It is through the construction of conversations in which both child and parent strive to communicate particular meaning that children become competent in using language. Bloom, Rocissano and Hood identified a number of strategies used by children which took information from an earlier utterance by the adult in order to take a turn in the conversation. They suggested that in the early stages of using an L1 children imitate words and structures in the adult’s speech which they had already partly or fully acquired. Later they repeated the verb used by the adult and incorporated words or phrases used earlier in the conversation. In this way, it seems children are helped to expand their repertoire day by day and learn about the lexical and syntactical function of verbs. Bruner has also concluded that it is through established routines of carrying on conversations about there and now events that children are helped to recognise how talk is related to what is seen and touched and how linguistic structures are used to discriminate variations in meaning. Substantial support has been given to this view by a study of children between the ages of 18 months and 0 years carried out by G. Wells. The project recorded samples of children’s talk at home with parents on a regular basis and followed up with studies of their responses to school and educational achievement at the age of 10. An important finding was that certain characteristics of interaction in the home were closely related to aspects of children’s use of language and level of achievement in school. Two particular approaches were distinguished: in one, parents interacted with their children, helping them to express their thinking. In this, the adults showed sensitivity to children’s interests and focused attention and helped them to develop ideas arising from those interests by clearly valuing children’s contributions, and adding to their ideas by offering relevant information. Such interaction was described as supportive. A 2nd pattern of interaction was characterised by greater imposition by the parents of the topic under discussion, with little recognition of children’s attempts to contribute to the exchange and revealed that the parents were intuitively assuming a tutorial role. From this and other studies of interaction Wells concluded that the most important experience for children is for carers to be sensitive to their interests and stage of development, to find their attempts to communicate of interest and to help them make their meanings clear. It is the search for regularity, for common features and the impetus towards the formation of concepts that provides the possibility for L to emerge and it is the urge to communicate differences in meanings that makes parents intuitively give attention to helping their children to recognise the part that structures of the L play in conveying particular kinds of meaning. Research into classroom interaction has shown that teachers’ talk predominates and that opportunities for children to communicate and extend their ideas are limited. Young children learning to use a second language Generally similar patterns have been found when children are learning English as a SL as when younger children are acquiring English as their L1. There are some universal processing strategies that are used both in learning to use the L1 and in learning to use a SL. Studies suggest that children gradually reconstruct rules for a second language that is becoming familiar, by imposing rules from their L1 on what they hear and then try to produce talk in the SL guided by those rules. The responses they then receive from adults gradually help them to recognise that the rules are different and to recognise different regularities. Studies have found that the same sequence of development did not necessarily take place and that differences were dependent on the child’s L1. However, generally researchers agree that children have a predisposition to use L and that there are common characteristics between learning the L1 and learning to use a second language. The kind of interaction and contexts from which young children will receive the most effective support for learning a SL has not yet been the subject of much research but it would seem that present knowledge of L1 learning provides insights which can guide those who seek to help young children learn a second language. Becoming attuned to a second language Children between the ages of 3 and 7 are aware of “talking” but they are still unable to conceive L as a system that conforms to a set of rules that can be learnt and applied, even though they are intuitively applying many of those rules. Nor are they likely to have a commitment to learning a second language because of some advantage this might bring in the future, motivation that would be understood by older learners. And there is still only one medium through which they can learn L, since generally they are unable to read and write and are still dependent on learning language through talking. Children’s experiences during the period before they begin to acquire their L1 (up to 18 months and 2 years old) have been shown to be crucial in preparing the essential basis for the development of L. During this period, the necessary relationships are developing between parents and their babies, and communication is established through gestures, facial expressions, actions and vocalisations. It is essential to consider whether such conditions will also be needed in an environment created to give optimum support to children when they are learning a second language. Even though young children have a potential for learning language, this potential can only come into play if they are immersed in experiences of the language being used. So it is just as essential for children to see and hear the SL being used, with much of it being directly addressed to them. Since children already use an L1, the conditions for acquiring the second language should resemble as far as possible those of living in a family where 2 languages are in daily use and where the children are frequently involved in using both. When speaking to children in a second language it is important to support communication through the use of gesture, facial expression and action because this gives children clues to the meaning of what they hear, and draws their attention to and helps them become familiar with the sounds, rhythms and stress of the second language. So, it will be essential for teachers to use the SL, addressing children directly as individuals when they are engaging in activities in small groups, in the way parents would do. They need to adjust their own talk intuitively to come within the capabilities of the particular child they are addressing, encourage children to respond by whatever means they can and respond to them with talk and accompanying gestures and non-verbal signals that support communication and give essential information. It is through frequent interaction with individual children, even when they cannot respond in the second language, that teachers will be able to judge when each child is ready to take another step forward, taking clues from each child’s behaviour. This includes recognising when a child is attempting to use some element of the SL for the 1st time and offering responses that will help and encourage further attempts. Such attempts will be an indication that the child is becoming adjusted to the new environment and attuned to the second language as it is ready to take further steps. From first to second language At whatever age children begin to use a second language we know that they will have developed skills and strategies in learning to use their L1. Unlike younger children developing their L1, where concept development and language development are largely interdependent, they will have established a wide range of concepts and meanings that they are able to express in their L1. This means that once they try to use elements of the second language to communicate, they will intuitively be looking for a means of expressing already established meanings. Intuitively children will be looking for evidence from the sounds they hear, from the gestures and actions of speakers and from the objects and materials being used to help them identify “words” and their reference as they would do in their L1. Children may also by trying to apply intuitive knowledge of the structure of the L1 in order to bring some order to what others are saying. In the past, it was agreed that what had been established in learning a L1 was likely to “interfere” with learning a SL, since languages have such different structures. There is some evidence that children may intuitively be seeking for structure characteristic of their L1 and this may cause frustration when it fails to bring a solution. More recent research supports the view that where two languages are being acquired simultaneously there will be parallel development. Where one language is established before acquiring a 2nd, then strategies developed in learning the L1 will transfer to the process of learning subsequent languages and be a positive aid to learning. Knowledge of children’s L1 should alert teachers to features of the second language that are contrary to the children’s expectations. They might then deliberately offer appropriate information through their responses, repeating phrases that give clues to the different structure. This would also apply to sounds used in the SL that are not part of the L1 and so may go unnoticed or present difficulties of articulation. Teachers’ responses might then include slightly exaggerated articulation, making sure that children see the movement of the mouth. When children are learning a second language, it is clear that it will be some time before the second language will become adequate for expressing ideas commensurate with their intellectual and social development and before the second language can be effective in promoting conceptual development. The importance of children continuing to have appropriate experiences of using the L1 during this period should not be underestimated. Studies of young children becoming bilingual suggest that the contexts in which each language is used should be clearly differentiated, either by association with particular adults or situations so that children build up expectations about when each language will be used. Children’s strategies in learning language In the early days of language study, the view that language was learnt mainly by imitation and repetition was widely accepted but recent theory put forward by Chomsky that innate mechanisms are the main source of learning, has led to the role of imitation and repetition being accorded less importance than formerly. More recently the closer examination of interaction and the nature of talk to and with young children, and of children’s responses, has led to a re-examination of the role of imitation and repetition by children. From studies of both L1 and second language learning it is clear that the 1st attempts to produce speech are attempts to imitate single words used by others. As meaning becomes attached, children go on to use them frequently, repeating them as practising using them. Children then begin to combine words learnt in this way, showing creativity in the production of telegraphic speech. Children imitate and repeat short phrases attached to particular kinds of situations in the same way. Through frequent imitation, such phrases are learnt and continue to be used as unanalysed wholes and so have been termed formulaic. According to Fillmore, formulaic speech is central to the development of language in the early stages but once children move into creative production of language and intuitively recognise underlying rules they become less and less dependent for communication on the strategy of formulaic speech. There are many utterances that are learnt as wholes in both L1 and second language learning and these generally have a grammatical complexity that will not fit the intuitive imposition of structure that children are attempting in their creative utterances. Phrases like “I don’t know”, “It doesn’t matter” and “That’s not good” are used frequently and are attached to types of situations rather than to particular objects or activities. They serve well in conversation and give children a means of responding to and initiating talk even when they rely mainly on gestures and action for communicating. Children’s use of formulaic speech is a valuable strategy to be recognised and encouraged by those who seek to promote children’s learning. The responses of others to children’s attempts to communicate through the use of imitation, repetition and formulaic speech when learning a L1 lead to the development of a 4th important strategy: incorporation. As children’s use of repetition proceeds they begin to put such learnt components together to express meaning. Often this takes the form of repeating a word or short phrase used by the adult and putting it in some sequence. The teacher’s role in promoting second language development Young children who are learning a second language in school will need support of a similar kind of the L1 if the strategies for learning language are to be brought into play. Teachers need therefore to deliberately use strategies that parents generally use quite intuitively. Generally, parents’ talk to and with children is about a concrete present situation in which children’s interest is held by their own involvement in the activity and talk adds to their interest and enjoyment. In the early stages much of parents’ talk is paralleled by gesture and action so that reference is established for objects and distinctive actions. Parents tend to speak a little more slowly to children and with a higher pitched voice signalling that talk is addressed to them individually. Parents tend to articulate more clearly and often follow up by using those same words in simple, well-formed, colloquial utterances. As children begin to talk, at 1st with single words and then combining two or more, and using formulaic phrases, parents respond to the meaning of what children are trying to express, but at the same time, they provide models for children. Parents frequently repeat single words clearly, often several times and at a level at which the child can see the movements of the mouth, in order to help a child with reference of with articulation, and encourage the child to try again. Once children begin to produce single words as reference to objects and actions, parents repeat the word often several times and often then incorporate the word in a colloquial complete phrase that is generally used for making such reference. They join in the child’s activity accompanying their own actions and the child’s with appropriate simple utterances, intuitively emphasising words carrying reference but, also intuitively, letting the child hear them in well-formed colloquial structures. Parents encourage children to talk, are prepared to listen and give time to complete what they are trying to say. When children begin to use telegraphic utterances, parents respond to children’s meaning, but intuitively 1st fill out the telegraphic phrase the child has used to a well-formed phrase with the same meaning. Parents often begin a response to children’s talk with a reformulation of their ill-formed utterances before proceeding to extend meaning and stimulate children to think and communicate further ideas. Once children show that everyday references and simple colloquial structures are being established, intuitively parents begin to introduce alternative structures and ways of expressing similar meaning, preceding them or following them with forms their children are already using. In this way, parents give impetus to children’s acquisition of more complex structures and vocabulary that allow greater differentiation of meaning. THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN’S THINKING AND UNDERSTANDING - Brumfit, Moon and Tongue Whenever we consider an aspect of children’s development, and important issue immediately arises: is the process best explained in terms of inborn factors or the influence of external forces? Phrases like “nature vs nurture” or “heredity vs environment” are used and arguments have been put on both sides over the years. Some, like the American developmental psychologist Gesell, have described development as a simple process of maturation, with certain characteristics pre-programmed into the child. Others, following a behaviourist psychology line, stress the role of the environment in creating and shaping any individual. More recently, it seems more reasonable to suggest that what any child develops in terms of characteristics and skills is going to be the result of very complex interactions between inborn potentials and environmental responses and experiences. Children are active participants in their own development. Children’s thinking and understanding The terms thinking and understanding are often used rather loosely so perhaps some definitions are in order. Both imply mental activity and both occur internally in the mind. Thinking seems to involve the manipulation of ideas from memory and can cover many different kinds of mental activity. Often, it implies manipulating ideas towards a particular goal. Understanding seems to involve getting at the full meaning of a situation or piece of information seeing links and relationships. If we have a logical problem to 6- or 7-years-olds, what would their response be? Our experience or intuition would probably tell us that they would behave in a random, trial-and-error kind of way and that they would be unlikely to find a valid answer to the problem. Perhaps they are unable to think in a logical and abstract way, or it is just a matter of experience, so that with help they could some the problem. Is children’s thinking and view of the world fundamentally different from that of adults? Piaget’s views on the development of children’s thinking Piaget obtained information about children by observing them very closely and by means of the “clinical interview”. In this procedure, the child is presented with a problem to solve or a situation to explain. He/ She is observed doing this and then asked questions about it. Based on this kind of evidence, Piaget developed his theory. A central idea is that of adaptation. We are all constantly adapting to the world- this is how he defines intelligence. From birth, the world outside begins to impinge on us and as a result of our earliest dealings with this environment we begin to develop sets of ideas or concepts which allow us to begin to relate to, classify and predict what is happening around us. According to Piaget, 2 kinds of processes are at work to bring this adaptation about. When we come upon a new object or experience, our existing ideas and concepts will give us some clue about how to recognise and interpret it. Previous experience had provided a framework into which the new object can be integrated – the process of assimilation. At the same time, that framework becomes extended a little as a result of engaging with the new object. This enriched concept will in turn allow the child to see and recognise more possibilities in the world next time. This is the process of accommodation. Assimilation and accommodation processes work in a complementary way with each other to give organization to our growing knowledge and understanding. What we already know influences how we are able to recognise and interpret new information and experiences and under appropriate circumstances modifies, changes or extends that knowledge. From time to time, in the course of the child’s development, these “modifications” are so wide-ranging and revolutionary that we could say that a different kind of thinking has emerged: these are the famous stages. The move is from highly limited concepts in early infancy to complex abstract and logical thinking in adolescence and adulthood. The baby comes to know the world by direct actions upon it – a period of practical intelligence. These actions become more and more internalised and so allow the manipulation of ideas in the mind. Because of this, throughout middle childhood, the possibility of more logical and abstract thinking gradually emerges. The questioning of Piaget’s theory 1. His focus was on a particular aspect of children’s development: the capacity to think logically and scientifically. This is only a small part of the richness of human thinking and culture and that it omits much that is significant about human understanding. 2. Because the tasks he set for children were focused in this way, with strict formats and questions, he may have obtained a rather biased view of children’s abilities. Other workers have modified the tasks, making them more comprehensible to children, and obtained more positive results. Piaget seems to underestimate the abilities of children. 3. The idea that children’s thinking passes through certain definable stages. If we use the term stage in a strict sense, we imply that the characteristics within that stage are clear cut and coherent. 4. For Piaget, L is not the driving force for the development of children’s thinking and understanding. 5. Piaget does not give much of a role to adults in this process of development. Social relationships and the social context are not important factors; the children seem to have to do all the work for themselves. Information processing framework The growth of computer technology has provided some ideas about how the human mind works. The computer takes information, represents it internally, then processes it and manipulates it in various ways. Perhaps there are some parallels with human functioning: we take in information, store, retrieve, utilise and transform it. All the time, all your senses are bombarded by sounds, sights, smells and so on; but you are ignoring most of them because you are attending to the activity that is your central focus at that moment. This very 1st stage of taking information is a highly selective process. Our attention is a limited resource. Once information has been attended to and perceived, it can be worked on; we can make sense of it, make links with other knowledge, see relationships, think of ways to try to remember it. The more these processes happen, the more likely we are to incorporate the new information into our framework of existing knowledge and understanding. 2 important processes are: rehearsal (ways of remembering) and “chunking” (grouping information in order to create larger units of information). The knowledge we have accumulated and stored is a major influence on what we choose to attend to and how we deal with it. This long-term store must contain all a person knows about the world. It seems to be unlimited in capacity but it is very difficult to have access to all the information and procedural knowledge. Therefore, the more organised this information is, the more likely we are to be able to retrieve it and utilise it. How does this system develop? When we start to learn a new skill, we are novices. At 1st there seems to be too much to concentrate on at once and if we focus on 1 part, we lose control of another. But once we have mastered it, everything seems to fit together, we can perform efficiently and flexibly. The skills become more automatic and as this happens progressively, more of our attention becomes freed so we can begin to focus on new information. Children are in many ways novices, becoming and being helped to become more expert in a variety of information processing skills and understandings: 1. Remembering sequences of numbers: very young children can’t recall sequences of many numbers, but as they grow old, they can remember as many as an adult. This is because of a change in capacity and of strategies of remembering. 2. Applying more general memory strategies: Even very young children seem to understand what it means to remember although they may not be very good at it. However, when young children are guided and helped to apply such strategies, they can do it too; they don’t do so spontaneously. Progressively, they come to use more powerful rules and procedures. 3. Scanning pictures: When it comes to taking information from pictures, being asked to look for similarities and differences across 2 pictures, there are differences between 5-year-olds and older children in the way they tackle the problem. The scanning patterns of the younger ones have a rather fragmented and impulsive character, while by age 7 or 8, scanning is much more systematic and analytic. Evidence demonstrates the kinds of change that are happening during this middle childhood period. Random and unskilled approaches gradually become more automatic, fluent and strategic, and what’s more, we can help in the process. Even quite high-level thinking and cognitive skills can be taught giving us a rather different way of looking at children and their abilities. Children may not have radically different capacities from those of adults and in some ways, when they have the appropriate experience, their performance can be superior. As Bruner has suggested, we can teach anything to a child at more or less any point, provided our method and intervention are appropriate to the needs of the individual. Knowing about knowing and learning how to learn As adults, part of the stored knowledge we possess will include sth about what we know, what kind of procedures to apply in particular situations and recognising when we do not understand. The term given to these aspects of our knowledge is metacognition and it enables us to monitor our own functioning and therefore to learn and think efficiently. Even young children seem to have some rudimentary insights into their thinking. They seem to be aware that they forget things, that trying to remember some things is harder than other, and that certain tasks are harder than others. Planning and knowing what kind of approach or strategy to adopt are important self-monitoring skills and young children often lack them. Karmiloff-Smith studied the processes by which children tackle new problems. She puts forward a 3-phase sequence in children’s problem-solving. In the 1st phase, when presented with a new problem or material, children seem driven and dominated by them, with little organisation to their behaviour. Using positive and negative feedback from direct dealings with the problem, they may solve it, but not very effectively. Then a 2nd phase emerges when they seem to rethink their earlier procedures and create an internal representation or plan. This is a reflective, almost metaprocedural stage which they then try to impose on the material or problem. In the final phase, the internal representation and the external experiences are brought into line with each other and the result is an organised solving of the problem. This sequence draws attention to the importance of internal representation and reflection – the metacognitive aspects. When children learn a new grammatical structure or item of complex vocabulary, they frequently go through a regressive phase when they fail to use it properly after having apparently mastered it. Differences between individuals All individuals are unique in terms of their physical characteristics, personality and facility in performing certain activities. Yet all the approaches we have considered so far speak in general terms about processes that broadly apply to everyone. For some purposes in educational contexts it is important to recognise that within these general patterns, each child’s experience, interests and knowledge will be unique. The idea of individual differences is well studied in psychology and much time has been spent trying to measure them. This is especially true of the complex and elusive idea of intelligence. In education contexts, given the controversy and debate that still surround the idea of intelligence, we should question its usefulness. It is not necessarily helpful to label children “intelligent” or “lacking in intelligence” as though it were a fixed and unchangeable quality which they either have or lack.. UNIT 1. EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER LANGUAGE EQUIPMENT Items that can be useful both for practical and for motivational reasons: Pictures and images: pictures can be in the form of flashcards, large wall pictures (big enough to see more details), cue cards (small carts for students to use in pair or group work), photographs or illustrations. Some teachers also use projected slides, images from an overhead projector, projected computer images or drawings on the board. Pictures can be used in a multiplicity of ways: - Drill → we use cue-response drills specially with lower-students. We hold up a cue before nominating a student to give a response, and so on. Flashcards are particularly useful for “drilling” grammar items, for cueing sentences or practising vocabulary. Teachers can also use point to pictures to elicit info or let students play with flashcards. - Communication games → one student can describe a picture and another one has to draw it. Students can order stories. Teachers sometimes use pictures for creative writing. They might tell sts to invent a story using at least three of the images in front of them. Sts can have a conversation about a topic and as they speak, they have to pick a card and bring what the card shows into the conversation. - Understanding → to present and check meaning. We can check understanding of writing or listening by asking students to select pictures which best correspond to the passage. - Ornamentation → to make words more appealing, by adding pictures or images to texts. Pictures enhance the text, giving sts a view of the outside world, and they can engage sts. - Prediction → sts can predict what is coming next in a lesson. They might look at a picture and try to guess what it shows (are the ppl in the picture brother and sister, friends, what are they talking about, etc). They listen or read a passage and check their predictions. This is very engaging for students. - Discussion → pictures can stimulate questions like “what is it showing? How does it make you feel? What’s the artist's intention?” etc. We can also ask sts to write a description of a picture or to invent the conversation taking place btw the ppl in the picture. The choice and use of pictures is very much a matter of personal taste, but there are three qualities they need to possess if they are to engage sts and be linguist