ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at issues surrounding teaching languages to the 'youngest children'. The skill of creating structures and routines for children while in school but not making over-rigorous or rigid timetables is a key element of good practice. Bruner's separation of modes of learning into enactive, iconic and symbolic is relevant both because of the age of the children and of the nature of language and its development. The continuum that operates from fully teacher-centred, teacherled to completely child-initiated has many steps and shades of steps. The matching will enable the children to 'discover' the complete word with a focus on the reading and pronunciation. If we think about other aspects of children's language and literacy development at the age of 2 to 5 years and then forward to 7 years, one constant feature is phonics teaching. In an article addressing young children's language acquisition, Schon et al. established that songs enable language acquisition perhaps because of the emotional/motivational factor.