MOTTO

As ConfuCius sAid…

I hear and I forget.

I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.
 UNIT 1

Some theoretical background necessary to understand early teaching

methodology

1. Defining terms
In this coursebook:

Very young learners are aged 3-6/7 years or referred as pre-school children who have not yet
started compulsory schooling and have not yet started to read.

Young learners or school-aged children are considered as learners between six/seven and twelve
years of age. They can be also defined as children from the first formal schooling, six or seven
years old to eleven or twelve years of age.

The table below shows the differentiation of very young learner (under aged 6/7) and young learner
aged 6/7-12 years according Mary Slattery & Jane Willis on English for Primary Teachers (2001)
such as:

Very Young Learners (under 6) Young Learners (aged 6-12)

- acquire through hearing and experiencing lots
of English, in much the same way they acquire
L1
- learn things through playing; they are not
consciously trying to learn new words or
phrases for them it’s incidental
- love playing with language sounds, imitating,
and making funny noises
- are not able to organize their learning
- not able to read or write in L1; important to
recycle language through talk and play
- their grammar will develop gradually on its
own when exposed to lots of English in context
- are learning to read and write in
L1/L2
- are developing as thinkers
- understand the difference between
the real and the imaginary
- can plan and organize how best to
carry out an activity
- can work with others and learn from
others
- can be reliable and take
responsibility for class activities and
routines

Early education (0—6 years)

Early education consisting of:
  the before preschool level (0—3 years)
 the preschool education (3—6 years), which includes: the small group, the middle group
and the big group. In public institutions it is free.
Early childhood education - before preschool level can take place in nurseries, kindergartens and
daycare centers, whether state-owned or private, according to the same educational content and
the same national standards.
Preschool education takes place in kindergartens or schools (state or private), which have pre-
school groups as a section, following the same curriculum and respecting the same national
standards.
Early education is free in public institutions.

Primary education (ISCED 1)

Primary education includes:
 the preparatory grade
 grades 1—4.

2. What do we know about how children learn?

The chart below outlines children’s basic development, from 3 to 6 years old, and from 6 to 9 years
old. These general guidelines aim to show what we can expect from children of these age groups
and how we can teach them in ways that are appropriate for their stage of development. Do not
forget that there can be some differences between individual children.

Areas of Ages Educational implications

development 3-6 6-9
Control of Still developing, so a - Muscles are stronger - Activities should be varied
muscular great need for and more resistant. and should help develop
movement physical exercise. - Control body is large motor movements
greater. (running, jumping, etc.) and
hand-eye coordination
(cutting out, modelling, etc.)
- Teacher should remember
that physical changes can
generate insecurity.
Emotions - Very unstable; can - Begins to cooperate - Activities should be short,
have sudden tantrums with others. with lots of variety.
and whims. - Has greater control of - Teacher should be warm,
- Feels both emotional well-balanced, and able to
insecurity and ambivalence. restore child’s equilibrium,
omnipotence. - Is interested in sexual and should offer constant
- Does not know how differences. encouragement.
to wait, which causes
frustration.
Intelligence - Thought is - Is more realistic and - Activities should use toys
subjective and rational. that imitate real life (toy car,
egocentric. - Becomes more toy food, etc.).
- Confuses fantasy objective. - Activities for 6-9 year-olds
and reality. - Opens up to the should widen their minds
- Can substitute outside world. and develop reasoning and
drawing or game for logic, as well as creativity
real objects and imagination.
(symbolic thought
begins).
Language Can express Uses tenses correctly at Activities should develop
him/herself clearly in age 6 and understands oral and writing skills.
L1 by age 3-4. them from 8-9.
Sociability - Is egocentric, - Initiates relationships - Teacher should favour
subjective and with peers. group work to encourage
dependent. - Alternates periods of sociability, sharing and
- First contacts with silence and continuous concentration.
peers are ambivalent talking. - With 6-9 year-olds,
(can be aggressive - Can work very simply teacher should be concerned
and friendly to same in a team from age 7-8. with their scales of values.
person). - Needs the group for - Teacher should know that
Starts to be aware of security and self- conflict with adults is
his potential (abilities esteem. normal with older age
and limitations). - Learns moral values group.
from adults.

Behaviour - Extremely keen to - Very active child - Teacher should encourage

communicate in order starts to become communication.
to differentiate calmer. - Teacher should persuade
himself from others. - Usually keen to read child to do required activity.
- Passionate in ways and write. - Teacher should monitor
he does things. - Often admires aggressive behavior,
- Physically teachers and thinks without over-reacting.
aggressive, without they know everything. - Teacher should try to be
reason. good role model for older
- Takes other children.
children’s toys as a
way of affirming
himself.
- Interrupts activities
to gain attention.
(Adapted from Genevieve Roth’s Teaching Very Young Children, p.8-9))

Task 1
Now it is time for you to complete a similar chart for 9-12 age group using the same headings.

Areas of development Age: 9-12 Educational

implications

Task 2
Read the following text about early development in children and complete the table below with
information in the text and from your knowledge:

Early development in children

In the first years of a child’s life many important milestones are reached.
By the end of the first year a baby will have already acquired some social
skills. He will enjoy imitating people and will also test parental responses
to his behaviour. For example, what do my parents do if I refuse food? In
terms of movement, an infant will be able to reach a sitting position
unassisted and pull himself up to stand. He may be able to walk for a
moment without support. As far as communication is concerned, he will
be able to use simple gestures such as shaking his head for ‘no’, say ‘mama’
and ‘dada’ and he will try to imitate words. When it comes to cognitive
development, he will be able to find hidden objects easily and use objects
correctly such as drinking from a cup.

By the age of two or three, the infant has reached the toddler stage. In
terms of social skills, this means, he is becoming more independent, which
may result in the occasional tantrum. However, he has learned to take
turns in games and spontaneously expresses affection. His physical
development will also have increased significantly as he can now move
around a lot faster and even run. He can also climb up stairs or low
obstacles, and even ride a small tricycle. However, he will still be rather
unsteady on his feet at times. When it comes to language and
communication he can now understand most sentences and uses four- and
five-word sentences. In terms of cognitive development, he has learned to
play make-believe games and uses his imagination more. He has also
mastered the skill of sorting objects according to their shape and colour.
Between the ages of six and twelve, a child reaches what is termed ‘middle
childhood’ and they will stay in this phase until they reach adolescence. In
middle childhood, children’s development is more affected by the outside
world and the child’s world expands to include friends, teachers, sports
trainers and so on. Children develop at various rates and while some
children in middle childhood seem very mature in terms of their emotional
and social skills, others seem very immature. As far as physical milestones
are concerned, during this stage growth is steady but less rapid than
during the preschool years. There are some major changes occurring at
this stage as baby teeth will come out and permanent adult teeth will
grow. As the mouth is not fully developed this may cause overcrowding.
Eyes will reach maturity in both size and function. In terms of their
cognitive ability, children at this stage master the skills of sequencing and
ordering which are essential for math. By the end of this period children
should have acquired effective reading and writing skills.

Stage Social/emotional Physical Cognitive and Language

development development communication development
development
Infants and
babies
(up to 18
months)
Toddlers and
preschoolers
(18 months-2
years; 2-6
years)
Grade-
schoolers
(6/7-12 years)
3. Some of the most influential theories of children learning development
There is perhaps nothing more remarkable than the emergence of language in children. Have you
ever wondered how a child can go from saying just a few words to suddenly producing full
sentences in just a short matter of time? Researchers have found that language development begins
before a child is even born, as a fetus is able to identify the speech and sound patterns of the
mother's voice. By the age of four months, infants are able to discriminate sounds and even read
lips.
Researchers have actually found that infants are able to distinguish between speech sounds from
all languages, not just the native language spoken in their homes. However, this ability disappears
around the age of 10 months and children begin to only recognize the speech sounds of their native
language. By the time a child reaches age three, he or she will have a vocabulary of approximately
3,000 words.
Let’s have a quick look at the language acquisition in children:

Pre-linguistic Linguistic Cognitive development

newborn cry, vocalize 10-20 ………. 2-7/8 yrs pre-operational =
months perception
1 week recognise 24 months ………. 7-11 yrs concrete = learn by
mother’s doing
voice
2 months distinguish 2-3 years sentences 11/12 yrs formal o.p.s. = use
ba/pa abstract ideas
 3 months sounds, 5 years vocab ….. to
respond …… words
5-8 months understand
basic vocab

So how exactly does language development happen? Researchers have proposed several different
theories to explain how and why language development occurs.

1. Cognitivism view: learning is a process of acquiring and storing information

Jean Piaget – “Children learn through play, by contacting and interacting with their external
world.”

 Piaget, the first to study children in a scientific way;

 Children learn through actions and exploration (learn by doing!);
 Children relate new ideas to themselves and their immediate surroundings and make
connections to things they know;
 Children develop through four specific stages of thinking such as:
1. Sensory-motor stage (from 0-2 years) – the young children learn to interact with the
environment by manipulating objects around him;
2. Pre-operational stage (from 2-7 years - the children rely on perception but they gradually
become more capable of logical thinking. This stage is characterized by egocentrism and
lack of logical thinking;
3. Concrete operational stage (from 7-11 years) – the children begin to conceptualize and
does some abstract problem solving but cannot generalize their understanding; they still
learn by doing;
4. Formal operational stage (from 11-15 years) – the children are able to use abstract thinking
and to carry out logical operations such as deductive reasoning in a systematic way; they
achieve ‘formal logic’.
 Children should be given learning tasks that are suitable for their stage of thinking.
Note: Piaget underestimated the role of language and the role of adults in helping children to learn
while overestimating the role of play.

2. Constructivism: meaning is continuously “constructed” through experience and

reflection

Lev Vygotsky – “Children construct knowledge through social interaction”

 Development is primarily driven by language, social context and adult guidance;
 Children learn through social interaction;
 Children acquire knowledge through interaction with other people. There is a difference
between what children achieve (and how they could develop) on their own and what
children could achieve (and how they could develop) when an adult is able to work with
them. This is described as the Zone of Proximal Development.
Note: The difference between Piaget and Vygotsky is that:
- Piaget believes child learns through his or her own individual actions.
- Vygotsky believes adults/teachers should provide assistance in order to improve children’s
level of development.

Jerome Bruner – “Children learn effectively through scaffolding given by adults”

 Children develop and grow through the systematic support given by adults called
scaffolding. The term scaffolding is largely used in English language teaching when
teachers provide support in the learning process by giving the vocabulary or asking some
guiding questions;
 Children find school learning difficult because they experience it as very separate from
their real lives;
 Children’s learning is seen as moving through three modes of representation, namely
knowing something through doing it, through working with a picture or image of it, and
through using some symbolic means, such as language.

Note: This highlights the importance of social interaction and role of adult-child relationship in
learning.

3. Innatist/Nativist view: a biologically based theory, which argues that humans are pre-
programmed with the innate ability to develop language.
 Noam Chomsky – “Children have an innate ability to acquire
language”.

 Children are pre-programmed to learn a language as

learning is innate in the sense that every child has an in-born
capability to acquire a language, in an incredibly short time;
 The human brain is exposed to speech at birth and it
will make sense of utterances because it has been
programmed to do so;
 An internal or innate Language Acquisition Device
(LAD) , now referred to as Universal Grammar (UG) allows
infants to process all the language they hear and to produce
their own meaningful utterances;
 Children can learn complex grammatical forms thanks to LAD/UG.

Note: Social-interactionists criticized Chomsky’s preoccupation with the structures of language,

feeling that other more personal and social aspects of language use such as communication with
real people in real time, were being neglected.

Eric Lenneberg – Critical Period Hypothesis –Children have a certain amount of time to acquire
language.

 There is a specific and limited time for language acquisition

called Critical Period Hypothesis, up to puberty years, in which
children are able to learn language.
 After this age, it is extremely difficult for them to learn it.
 The functions of the hemispheres become more clear-cut and
language is most dominant in the left hemisphere. Therefore,
language acquisition is more difficult to acquire after this split.
 Young child’s brain has plasticity, enabling them to acquire
language (more than one) easily and develop native-like
pronunciation. Language is present in both hemispheres of their
brain.

Note: In many studies younger children (under 7) were found less

efficient learners of vocabulary and grammar than older ones, so
CPH is no longer valid although it has linguistic and cognitive dimensions.

4. Behaviourism: learning is a process of reacting to external stimuli

B. F. Skinner – “Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything”.

  The author of the concept “operant conditioning”
which means that an individual will respond to a
stimulus by behaving in a certain way. If this
behaviour is rewarded then the behaviour will
reoccur;
 Parents and other caregivers can use rewards and
punishments to try to influence a child’s behaviour;
 In language teaching, then, language can be seen as
a behaviour, which can be taught as such;
 This view had a strong influence on the audio-
lingual approach (this approach emphasis
repetition of the drills, accuracy and avoidance of errors) but cannot explain the creativity
of children;
 It offers partial explanation for aspects of first and second language acquisition but it
cannot explain acquisition of complex grammatical and lexical relationships.

Albert Bandura- Children learn by modeling

 He disagreed with Skinner;

 He pointed out that although the environment shapes behaviour, behaviour also affects the
environment;
 Since children learn by modeling, parents and caregivers should provide good examples.
5. The Natural Approach: based on observation and interpretation on how a person acquires
his/her first language. Language learning is a reproduction of the way humans naturally
acquire their native language.

Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell – “There are two independent ways of developing ability in
second languages. ‘Acquisition’ is a subconscious process identical in all important ways to the
process children utilize in acquiring their first language, … [and] ‘learning’…, [which is] a
conscious process that results in ‘knowing about’ [the rules of] language”.

 While adults can either learn or acquire a language, children can only acquire one;
 Teachers should provide children with a lot of comprehensible input that will allow them
to activate the acquisition process;
 Language acquisition occurs when language is used for what it was designed,
communication;
 Children need to get ‘input’ or ‘meet’ language in ways natural to them rather than simply
‘studying’ the language as some adults might be able to do;
 This approach is based on the use of language in communicative situations without
recourse to the native language and without reference to grammatical rules.

6. Other important views

Howard Gardner (multiple intelligences’ view)

  Children’s intelligence profiles consist of various combinations of the seven
intelligence types: kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, linguistic, logical-mathematical,
intrapersonal and spatial.
 Traditionally, school tests only two, logical-mathematical and linguistic (math and
reading) and uses these results to determine how successful a child is in school;
 Teachers should view their students in terms of a mix of all these intelligences, a
cognitive profile, rather than just how well they do in math and reading.

Note: An eighth intelligence, naturalistic, was added recently.

Michael Berman (learning styles and multiple intelligences’ view) – “Children may be able to
hear colour, see sound, taste time and touch smells.”

 Children have the ability to “store memories by associating them with their senses and
may even have the ability to cross-sense”. So they may be able to “hear colour, see
sound, taste time and touch smells.”
 There is a correlation between success in language learning and children’s preferred
learning styles so teachers should manage activities that accommodate the three main
learning styles characterized as visual, auditory and kinesthetic (VAK).

James Asher (TPR or Total Physical Response view) – “Speech directed to young children
consists primarily of commands, which children respond to physically before they begin to
produce verbal responses”.

 Children respond physically to spoken language, and adult learners learn better if they do
that too;
 Second language learning is parallel to first language learning and should reflect the same
naturalistic processes;
 Listening should develop before speaking;
 Once listening comprehension has been developed, speech devlops naturally and
effortlessly out of it;
 Kinesthetic intelligence and memory are used because children do not learn in a conscious
intellectual way. They do not learn by thinking, but by ‘doing’ things.

Note: Asher's language learning theories seem similar to those of other behavioural psychologists.

Maria Montessori – “Learning is a natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by
listening to words but by experiences in the environment.”

 Children learn language and other significant life skills, without conscious effort, form the
environments where they spend time;
 Children learn best through sensory experiences, by doing and through repetition;
 Children are capable of great concentration when they are surrounded by many interesting
things to do and given time and freedom to do them;
 Children need more physical activity.
Note: Maria Montessori de-centered the role of teacher and made the teacher the “keeper of the
environment” while children got on with their activities.

Reggio Emilia – “Children are capable of constructing their own learning”.

 Developed in Italy in the mid-late
1900s, this approach to teaching is
child-directed and project-based.
 Children are driven by their interests to
understand and know more.
 Using children’s interests as a guide,
teachers encourage children to explore a
particular theme or topic in-depth,
usually culminating in a large-scale
group project.
 Photo documentation is used
extensively by teachers as a teaching tool, an assessment tool and to aid in directing
children’s explorations.
 Children are also encouraged to explore concepts using a variety of symbolic
representations including the visual arts, dramatic play, music and storytelling.

Note: Reggio approach articulates children to acquire skills of critical thinking and collaboration.

Erik Erikson - "You see children playing, and it is close to seeing artist paint, for in play children
say things without uttering a word. You can see how they solve problems, also what's wrong.
Young children have enormous creativity and whatever is in them rises to the surface in free play."

 Children develop the foundation for emotional and social development and mental health;
  Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development considers the impact of external factors,
parents and society on personality development from childhood to adulthood. According
to Erikson’s theory, every person must pass through a series of eight interrelated stages
over the entire life cycle (“Eight Ages of Man”).

Waldorf – Another methodology developed in the first half of the 1900s by Rudolf Steiner,
Waldorf schools use the arts as a vehicle for teaching and learning and often great care is put into
the beauty of the school building itself.
 Steiner's division of child development into three major stages is reflected in the schools'
approach to early childhood education, which focuses on practical, hands-on activities and
creative play;
 During the preschool years, imagination and free play are emphasized, as are domestic and
practical activities (baking, gardening, etc.)
 Toys and other useful objects are made of all natural materials and designed to be a vehicle
for creativity.
 Oral language is emphasized.
 Reading and writing are usually not introduced until first grade.