ABSTRACT
Schools give considerable thought to the ways of achieving good standards in reading and writing, but important as reading and writing are, it must not be forgotten that they are only subsidiary skills in language. Ordinary children of normal intelligence and from a good home background usually arrive at school age with language sufficiently mature for them to be able to use speech as a means of getting on with other children and to make progress in pre-reading and pre-number work. Intelligent children do this for themselves with a minimum of adult guidance in their ceaseless exploration and discovery of their environment, whereas ESN children need help. It has been said that an interesting environment favours the acquisition of nouns, interesting activities favour the acquisition of verbs and that the other parts of speech are relatively more dependent on the quality of the child's thinking.
