Page 4 - How To Teach Young Learners
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Why teach English to young children?Why teach English to young children?
Why teach English to young children?hy teach English to young children?
· The children find it easy to accept a new linguistic code because they are still learning their
own.
· They find it easy to pronounce the new sounds for the same reason.
· They don’t feel self-conscious about sounding different.
· If they have a good experience of learning a language at this age, they will remember it with
fondness, so will find it easier to learn languages later in life.
Long-term educational aims of teaching languages to young children:
· To encourage open-mindedness by preparing the child for the understanding and tolerance
of different ways of thinking and learning
· To help to improve cognitive development, by offering a further instrument for organising
knowledge
· To encourage greater creativity as a consequence of a constant comparison between two
different linguistic codes
· To lay the foundations for continuous linguistic education, allowing the formation of a type
of education that is not exclusively centred on one’s own mother tongue and that leads to
an easier study of foreign languages at higher school levels. This is particularly relevant in
Paraguay, with its bilingual education in Spanish and Guaraní.
Fun English for Kids 4
Fiona L Cooper