Practice

Record on a cassette what you want the child to learn and ask the parent to play it daily in the background while the child is playing. The child hears the language, rather than listens to it, and absorbs it nat­urally as she would her mother tongue.

Positive reinforcement

Principle

Infants learn to speak their mother tongue not only by repeated hearing, but also by positive reinforcement. The same is true of second language learning.

Practice

Children really need to hear expres­sions like ‘Great!’ ‘Wow!’ ‘Wonderful!’ ‘Very Good!’ etc all the time. But then again, to a certain extent, don't we all? En­countering great enthusiasm from parents and others, a child thinks: 'Yes, I did do that well. I'll say it again for you.'

Repeated hearing and positive rein­forcement are really the corner-stones of a child's first language acquisition. They occur naturally in the child's home en­vironment. We only need to mimic this conscientiously, to make second language acquisition as close as possible to natural acquisition.

Brain processing

Principle

It is widely taught that language is largely a function of the left side of the brain, i.e. it belongs to the brain's ana­lytical side. Yet, up until the age of two, children process language in the whole brain, using both sides. It is between the ages of two and three that language shifts to the left side of the brain.

Practice

We should not teach anything analyti­cally to very young children. We should teach naturally and clearly, doing activi­ties that we would do with native English-speaking infants of the age. This means fun activities, songs and games – but in a carefully planned manner.

Content

Principle

The content of our lessons needs to be simple and natural, using the vehicles of language acquisition that infants use to learn their mother tongue. For example, songs, rhymes (dancing rhymes and finger rhymes) and activities involving simple actions. All these incorporate whole-brain learning and have three im­portant elements – visual, auditory and kinaesthetic.

The subject matter should be relevant to the children and the vocabulary should be appealing. Lessons must be fun.

Practice

Modes of transport (cars, trucks, ships, planes, etc), animals, parts of the body, actions, food, magic, etc are all rel­evant subjects. They should all be taught through poems, rhymes and actions.

Lesson planning

Principle

The younger the child, the shorter the attention span. Short activities are needed. You need to move quickly from one activ­ity to another and none should take more than two to three minutes. Most will be shorter. The child should get to the end of the lesson wanting more.

Practice

Start the lesson with a welcoming ac­tivity, for example singing a song in which you can use each child's name. Quickly go into a standing up activity; after a minute or two of this, have the children sit down and do a game or song that involves hand activities; you can then move on to co­louring a simple picture, while you discuss with each child what she is doing: 'What a lovely fish. Let's make it green,' etc.

Infants are great learners of English. It just depends how they are taught. It is deeply rewarding to teach them, as the long-term results are satisfying and you can have such fun doing it.

/Helen Doron

from “English Teaching Professional”,

№11, 2002/