Retrieved from internet in April 2010 from: An Introduction to Teaching English to Young and were also beginning to internalize
o internalize information in a very basic way through
Learners: Lesson 1 by Annie Hughes:
http://eltadvantage.ed2go.com/elt_demo/3te_demo/L02.htm
A Brief Historical Understanding of How Children Learn and Develop
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
1
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) in
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.
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
2
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 1.3 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.
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.
3
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 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.
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 Kinesthetic
may need to hear verbal instructions as you carry out a mathematical sum. Kinesthetic Intelligence
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.
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.

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 favouring this
intelligence. We would probably see a journalist using this
intelligence more than other people.
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
This intelligence links well with personal interaction with others and
Intelligence
people favouring this intelligence usually relate well to others.
People who enjoy counselling, teaching, training and demonstrating
use this intelligence a lot.

Intrapersonal
Intelligence
Logical- This intelligence favours reflection and personal thought about what
Mathematical is happening to individuals and the world around them. Often
Sorting and ordering are favoured by this intelligence, which also
Intelligence religious leaders have a strong tendency to use this intelligence more
includes classifying, ranking and sequencing. People who enjoy
than others.
research and organization of research results would likely show high
tendencies to use this intelligence more.

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
Spatial Intelligence: This intelligence links well with the use of diagrams, maps, charts,
emotions and the emotions of others that you learn through these feelings. Naturalist
plans, pictures and seeing how things fit together. Cartographers and
designers are likely to show strong signs of this intelligence.

4
 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).
How Do We Think Children Learn a Foreign Language?
Keeping everything from the first chapters of this lesson in mind, then, we will now focus
on foreign or additional language learning among young learners. If we were to observe
language classrooms today, we might see many different approaches to
teaching and learning underway from class to class (and from learner to
learner and from teacher to teacher). In this chapter, we are going to take
a look at some of the ways we think young learners learn language.
Two types of language (BICS and CALP)
Some really interesting work has been carried out by Jim Cummins (1979)
who suggests that there are two types of language that can be acquired. These are Basic
Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency
(CALP). As the names suggest, BICS-type language is the everyday social interactive
language that we all use when interacting from a very early age, while CALP-type language
5
is a rather sophisticated language we use as we focus on and study a subject at an
academic level using more analytical language.
In planning lessons for our young language learners (whether they are in an EAL, EFL or
ESL setting), we should ensure they have been exposed to and have acquired the BICS-
type language first so they are able to interact comfortably and meaningfully in the target
language. We can expect to focus their attention on the CALP-type language later in their
language learning when they are more advanced, cognitively and linguistically.
For example, we can encourage young learners to understand and use BICS-type language
by playing a game, singing a song, asking questions and giving information in an activity,
role-playing an everyday scene, and so on. When they are more able and confident with
the language, we can then guide them to understand and use CALP-type target language
to carry out activities such as describing a type of animal, writing about a famous person,
or figuring out a math problem.
Relating Overall Learning Theories to TEYL
If a foreign language is introduced to our young learners, then it would seem wise to do so
in the same way as any other subjects are introduced to them. It is worth pausing for a
moment here and reflecting on why young learners are taught anything, whether it is
science, history, music, or any other of the subjects they study in their early education.
We introduce a range of subjects to young learners, not as pure and abstract subjects, but
as an introduction to the interesting things that are all around them and are relevant to
their lives. We initially build the foundations of understanding in each subject in a very
practical, hands-on way so that the children can interact with the actual, physical and here
and now or concrete aspects of each subject at the appropriate stage of their cognitive
development. We also do this through scaffolding their learning in each and every subject
and in helping support their overall cognitive development.
The most important aspect of teaching young learners is that we should recognize how
we can develop their thinking and learning skills in each and every subject with a full
understanding of what each age group of learner is cognitively able to do and understand,
and can physically relate to and carry out.
Linking language learning with everyday life
Before embarking on teaching a foreign or second language to younger learners, then, we
need to remember that we are trying to provide opportunities for these learners to find
out about and use this other language. Teachers need to show them how the new
language can have a link with their everyday lives and be fun. Teachers can also,
depending on the age of the learners, introduce the idea that it is positive to speak
another language and communicate more easily in a world that is becoming smaller.
Language teachers, also need to act as mentors and modelers of this target language. As
mentors, they must support and scaffold the learning, and as modelers, they must provide
good examples of the language in use. They must also help young learners share their
ideas about everyday things around them and expand their general knowledge while
learning a new language.

Summary
So, to review this first lesson, our present understanding of how children learn is that they
learn to think, question and try to make sense of things around them best when they have
the guidance of someone who is scaffolding their learning. They also learn best when they
have intellectual and emotional support given by an adult.
This is likely to be the same when learning an additional, foreign or second
language, too. The mentor (or teacher) should be able to model the target learning,
questioning and thinking so that the learner will be able to understand, use and acquire
the target language more successfully. (Bruner and Haste 1987, Vygotsky 1978, Donaldson
1978) The mentor (or teacher) also needs to recognize that children have different
learning styles and thus will respond in various ways to different approaches. If,
additionally, we believe that we should actively involve our young learners in real
communication in the classroom, we need to ensure we teach BICS-type language so that
interaction in the target language becomes possible and children are able to learn about
and discuss new ideas through the language.