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WHA T IS DIFFERENT ABOUT TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE TO CHILDREN IN CONTRAST TO ADULTS OR ADOLESCENTS?
1. They want to please their teacher 2. They get into the activity (why or how)
3. Lose interest quickly 4. Less able to keep themselves motivated on difficult tasks 5. Do not have access to metalanguage 6. Lack of inhibition
Piaget
Active learner Learning takes place though actions taken to solve problems
provides the setting for development through the opportunities it offers the child for action
Transferring this idea to the abstract world of learning and ideas, we can think of the classroom as classroom activities as creating and offering opportunities to learners for learning.
Vigotsky
Language provides the child with a new tool opening new opportunities for doing things and organizing information
Adults mediate the world for children and make it accessible to them
With the help of adults, children can do much more than they can do on their own. ZPD --------Zone of proximal development
New meaning to intelligence: What a child can do alone what a child can do with skilled help
Vigotsky saw the child as first doing things in a social context, with other people and language helping in various ways, and gradually shifting away from reliance on others to independent action and thinking.
Bruner (1983
For Bruner, language is the most important tool for cognitive growth. Scaffolding -----teachers can scaffold children in various ways.
By
Suggesting Praising the significant Providing focusing activities Encouraging rehearsal Being explicit about organization
CPH holds that older learners will learn language differently after this stage and particularly for accent, can never achieve the same level of proficiency.
Some studies show that there is no such cutoff point for language learning. Lightbown and Spada (1999) present some evidence for and against the CPH.
They remind us to attend to the different needs, motivation and contexts for different groups of learners.