Lesson 1: How Do Young Learners Learn Languages?

Chapter 1
An Overview of Teaching English to Young Learners

Teaching English to young learners (TEYL), including children within the 3-12 age range, in a
meaningful and memorable way requires a person to understand how children learn and how
they learn languages. In this lesson, we will look at some theories of how children learn and
develop and how they might learn an additional, foreign or second language. In the next lesson,
we will consider the implications these theories about learning have for teaching English to
young learners.

An approach to TEYL

To begin, we will briefly consider important issues we need to be aware of so that we can get a
clear overview of what is involved in TEYL. To illustrate this, I shall use a diagram (see Figure
1.1) to show how a number of building blocks (each representing a different part of language
learning and teaching) can be placed together to create a structure that can represent our
approach to TEYL. By stacking these blocks one on top of the other, we can consider how each
is crucial for the support and development of the next in this tower of understanding.

Figure 1.1 Building blocks of understanding in teaching English to young learners

As you can see from Figure 1.1, the foundation block, which supports all the other blocks and is
crucial to the strength of this tower of understanding, is How young learners develop and learn
and learn languages. After looking at how learning takes place, we can examine more carefully
what is involved in teaching with Implications for teaching English to young learners. Then, we
can consider the various teaching techniques which can be implemented to help children
develop different skills with How we can teach language to young learners (looking at areas
such as teaching vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar as well as topic-based teaching), A
focus on the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) in TEYL, and Use of stories, songs,
rhymes, games and role-plays in TEYL. Finally, on the top of the tower is Evaluation,
assessment and research in TEYL, which allows us to look more closely at the outcomes of
teaching and learning in our classrooms.
Providing support

Without the foundation block and, in fact, all these blocks in place, this tower would not be
supported and would collapse. Similarly, our provision for teaching English to young learners
would also collapse, and be unsuccessful somewhere along the way, if we missed any of these
blocks of understanding in planning and carrying out our lessons for our young language
learners.

During the 12 lessons of this course, we will examine more closely the blocks illustrated above. I
hope you will come to understand more about each of them, and will also recognize that they
are inseparable and dependent on each other and should always be kept in mind during your
language teaching.

Chapter 2
A Brief Historical Understanding of How Children Learn and Develop

We do not have room in this course to consider all the studies that have involved children's
learning, or their learning of foreign or second languages. However, we will take a brief look at
those that have particular relevance and interest to us as TEYL practitioners today.

Views of Piaget

We will go back in history to look at the work of Jean Piaget, a well-known theorist in
developmental psychology, who tried to work out how children thought and developed
cognitively. In the 1960s and 1970s, Piaget set up various experiments to ascertain how
children thought in and about different situations so that he could determine how they
cognitively developed. He was particularly keen to understand how a child, as a 'lone scientist'
or thinker, would solve problems during his or her life experiences, and how approaches to
problem-solving might change as that individual got older and had more learning experiences.

Piaget's assumption was that children actively constructed knowledge from their experiences.
From birth, he saw them as trying to make sense of the world through their actions. This made
children central to their own learning. Piaget wanted to try to establish how children made sense
of their world and how they tried to work things out for themselves. (Piaget 1967, Cameron
2001)

Developmental stages of children

Based on the results from his work and research with children, carried out
under rather strict conditions in research laboratories, Piaget suggested that
children developed through specific stages. These stages were:

Sensori-Motor Stage (from 0 - 18 months) in which children seemed to learn through

interaction with the world around them, largely through the use of their senses. This was
a stage where Piaget felt children were particularly egocentric and were only able to
think about things in terms of how they interacted and linked with themselves.

Pre-operational stage (from 18 months - 7 years) in which children were

developing towards the next stage. They were starting to use some aspects
of the concrete world around them and were also beginning to internalize information in
a very basic way through the use of their imagination and memory.
 Concrete Operational Stage (from 7 - 11 years) in which children
were able to operate and learn through their interactions with the
concrete world around them and were moving towards the final
stage which would involve more abstract thinking.

Formal Operational Stage (from approximately 11 years of age to

adulthood) i n which children were able to develop more abstract thought
and understanding in this final stage of cognitive development.
Usually this stage coincided with puberty and the development into
adulthood.

Influential findings in Piaget's work

Piaget's work particularly tried to identify how children could assimilate (add new knowledge to
support old knowledge already established by them) and accommodate (change their present
understanding of something based on the new experience they have had), and how they might
develop their cognition and understanding using both.

Piaget believed the stages, outlined above, were fairly fixed in age and that children went
through them in this particular sequential order. He believed that children could only move onto
the next stage when they had completed the stage before and were ready to do so.

Piaget's work was highly influential and his findings were linked to classroom teaching and
methodology. This was done by basing teaching on the 'readiness' of children to move onto the
next stage of development. Many of us may remember the terms 'readiness' and 'reading
readiness' when thinking about the influence his work has had on the teaching of children over
the last 40 or so years. (Cameron 2001)

Another influential finding of Piaget's was his belief that it was very important that children be
given thinking time when faced with an experience or problem that they tried to solve.

Issues with Piaget's work

However, through the years, there has been discussion about some of Piaget's findings.
Through the work of Margaret Donaldson (1978), many of Piaget's experiments were recreated
and she found that his observations and measurements did not really reflect the way children
were actually able to think. Through her research she felt that children were able to achieve and
understand more than Piaget believed they could. She found Piaget had not, for example, take
into account what sense children were making of the type of adult questioning that was used in
the experiments he carried out, or the fact that the experiments were taking place in very
unnatural and child-unfriendly settings, such as science laboratories. (Cameron 2001,
Donaldson 1978)

Piaget's work has also come under quite heavy criticism because he did not consider the role of
language to be an important catalyst in the cognitive development of the child, whereas many
other people believe language is central to a child's development.
 Lasting importance of Piaget's work

Despite these concerns, Piaget's work was very important for us all
because he established the idea of the child as a lone scientist who was
actively seeking answers. He was also one of the first to suggest that
children had the need for thinking time.

Though Piaget's findings are no longer thought to illustrate exactly the way
we understand children's learning, he was the first person to try to establish exactly what was
going on in the child's head. He also thought about the child as an individual who developed
and thought as an individual rather than a small version of an adult or a passive and empty
vessel waiting for adults to fill his or her mind with information. Piaget's work was thus very
important as a first step in gaining understanding of the cognitive development of children.

Chapter 3
Language is Central to Child Development

Lev Vygotsky (1978) and Jerome Bruner (1983, 1990, Bruner and Haste 1987) believed, in
contrast to Piaget, that language was central to the cognitive development of children. In
particular, they thought it was instruction (provided by an adult, a teacher, or a more able peer)
that helped children to learn and develop.

Guiding the 'thinking' process

Vygotsky and Bruner believed that the act of internalization for children (moving thought from
something that was spoken out loud to thought that was in their heads) was helped and
supported when another more knowledgeable person talked the 'thinking' process through with
children and instructed or guided them along as they did so. For example, an adult might guide
a child through putting together a puzzle by saying: Let's take all the pieces out of the box and
turn them over. Now let's find all the pieces with the straight edges and put them over here. And
where are the four corner pieces? Oh, yes. Here they are

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

Encouraging development and growth

Bruner (1983,1990, Bruner and Haste 1987) developed this idea further and
described the cognitive support that could be given to children by a more knowledgeable other
as scaffolding. With scaffolding, children could develop and grow because the adult would give
support to their thinking and encourage them to think in ways that would develop their own
ability to think through situations.

Scaffolding is often seen when parents or teachers ask children what they are experiencing. For
example, in a situation where an adult is playing with a child at the beach, the adult might
encourage the child to develop in his or her thinking by asking questions such as: How does the
stone feel? Is it heavy? Do you think it would sink if you put it in water? How could we put the
stones together so that they would make a wall? Do you think the big ones should be at the top
or the bottom?
 Figure 1.2 A view of scaffolding: Just as scaffolding can provide support to a
building in its initial stages of development, a more knowledgeable other can
provide support to a child and encourage him or her on to higher stages of
development.

Making sense of experiences

Returning again to Donaldson's work (1978), she believed that children were able to cognitively
develop by trying to make sense of the experiences that they had, and by asking questions and
trying things out, or hypothesizing.

To some extent, this idea of the child as hypothesizer links back to what Piaget set out to
explain with his experiments. But, perhaps, Piaget approached his investigation too clinically
and not in a child-friendly enough way to gain clear insights into what children really were able
to do in their minds. Donaldson felt that Piaget's view of the child as very egocentric was not
necessarily the case. Donaldson's work, in contrast, showed how young children were able to
think in ways that Piaget felt they could not.

Figure 1.3
The child as
hypothesizer.

In

considering the child as hypothesizer, Donaldson felt the child continues to hypothesize until the
original hypothesis becomes changed or adapted by the feedback that continues to be received.
The child then changes internalized rules to new ones or adapts the ones previously held.

How Do We Think Children Learn Language?

Learning a language is a complex process. However, we can see in all corners of the world, that
children somehow learn to speak their native language without formal training. How does this
happen? There are theories about this, and there is continued research in the search for
answers. We will touch on a few theories below.

Language learning innate and universal?

If we move on to think about the learning and development of language in children, particularly
their mother tongue, we find that Noam Chomsky (1959) believed that learning was innate. This
idea was developed by the group called the Innatists, so called because they felt that learning
(and therefore language learning) happened to all individuals, and therefore, must be innate and
universal.

Chomsky felt that there was an innate language capacity in all of us which he called
the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). This ability to acquire language was later referred to
as Universal Grammar (UG).

Critical period for language learning?

This idea of Chomsky's linked neatly with the Critical Period Hypothesis
(CPH) suggested by Eric Lenneberg around the same time (1967). Lenneberg thought that
there was a critical period, up to about the age of eleven, in which children were able to learn
language. He believed that if language was introduced to children after this age (or this critical
period) then it was extremely difficult for them to learn it. This hypothesis has often been cited
as one of the main reasons for starting the teaching of foreign or second languages early in a
child's schooling.

Bruner (1983, 1990, Bruner and Haste 1987) feels that there is a Language Acquisition Support
System (LASS) supplied by adults, or more able mentors, that helps children to develop such a
language acquisition device and that this input and support is crucial to the success of language
acquisition in children.

Chapter 4

Children's Preferred Learning Styles

Children are constantly learning, inside and outside the classroom. By watching them in the
classroom and on the playground, we can see that individual children have different interests
and that they learn about their world in different ways.

Visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles

More recently, there have been some very interesting suggestions that children (and adults, too)
do not all learn in the same way and that there are probably many different types of learners.
This understanding focuses on the preferred learning style(s) that individuals seem to have and
how these influence what and how they learn. In essence, these are known as Visual, Auditory
and Kinesthetic (VAK) learning styles.

If you are a visual learner, you will need to see what is happening and link this to your
understanding. For example, you may need to see an example of a picture before you can draw
one. If you are an auditory learner, you will need to hear the input. For example, you may need
to hear verbal instructions as you carry out a mathematical sum. Kinesthetic learners are those
who prefer to learn by physical involvement. For example, you may need to touch and
manipulate a puzzle or game before you can understand how it works.
Multiple intelligences
Linked closely with this understanding of the three types of learning styles is the work of Howard
Gardner (1993) who suggested that there are actually a lot of different learning styles
or intelligences, as he called them, that we all have at our disposal. He believed that we
individually favor and use some more than others, and some to a greater or lesser extent than
others, too.

Initially Gardner suggested there were seven such Multiple Intelligences, but in his later work he
suggests there may be many more. The initial seven are noted below.

Linguistic
Intelligence
Reading, as well as the creative use of words (such as doing
crossword puzzles) is usually enjoyed by those favoring this
intelligence. We would probably see a journalist using this
intelligence more than other people.

Logical-
Mathematical
Intelligence Sorting and ordering are favored by this intelligence, which also
includes classifying, ranking and sequencing. People who enjoy
research and organization of research results would likely show
high tendencies to use this intelligence more.

Spatial
Intelligence: This intelligence links well with the use of diagrams, maps,
charts, plans, pictures and seeing how things fit together.
Cartographers and designers are likely to show strong signs of
this intelligence.

Kinesthetic
Intelligence
This intelligence leans toward the physical. Interaction with and
manipulation of themselves and objects is important to this
intelligence. Dancers, acrobats, gymnasts and sportspeople use
this intelligence a great deal.

Musical
Intelligence
The use of rhythm, music and song is particularly important to
this intelligence. Songwriters, singers and musicians would use
this intelligence much more than others.
Interpersonal
Intelligence This intelligence links well with personal interaction with others
and people favoring this intelligence usually relate well to
others. People who enjoy counseling, teaching, training and
demonstrating use this intelligence a lot.

Intrapersonal
Intelligence
This intelligence favors reflection and personal thought about
what is happening to individuals and the world around them.
Often religious leaders have a strong tendency to use this
intelligence more than others.

Gardner has also developed the idea that there are other intelligences such as emotional and
naturalist intelligences. Emotional intelligence is when you are so attuned to your emotions and
the emotions of others that you learn through these feelings. Naturalist intelligence is where you
learn through being involved in the natural world.

Considering your learning style

Do you feel you use some of these intelligences more than others? We all do, though it is
interesting and very revealing to be aware of the intelligences you favor.

With reference to language learning in particular, Berman (1998 in Ellis and Brewster 2002) felt
that there was a clear link between success in language learning and preferred learning styles,
so he carried out some research in an average adult class of learners. He found that 29% were
visual learners, 34% were auditory learners and a surprising 37% were kinesthetic learners.
This seems to be a very interesting result and as such, we cannot underestimate what the
implications might be for our own classroom teaching. Do we teach to each of these learning
styles in the same way or not?

The research of one of my own MA in TEYL students, Rosemary Smeets in Switzerland in 2004,
looked at young language learners and VAK learning styles and investigated whether learners
acquired vocabulary easier when using their preferred learning style. She found that the
students did seem to be able to learn more words when using their preferred learning style
(visual, auditory or kinesthetic).