Job Discussion Forums

[cvmurrieta]

[MotherF]

When I was in Japan, way back in 1996, I worked at a little one location language school for kids in a small city. They had classes from 3 years old and I actually think they did a good job for the littlest of their students. They didn't do any reading and writing until 6 years of age. Up until then the classes were no more than 6 students and for the first year the child was in the school under 6 years of age the mother attended the class with the child. So for the 3 year olds you'd have all mothers and child together. For the 4 year old some might have their mother with them, some not. For the 5 year olds most did not, and actually now that I think of it, I think the mother just attended the first month with the child to get the child used to the teacher at 5.

For the 3 year olds the mother was expected to repeat the activities at home with their child during the week. I think most did. There was one case where it was obvious the mother wasn't doing anything. I don't know why she was spending the money on the class. A few who may or may not have been doing it but either way the child showed no evidence of having learned English. Some others had kids who really impressed me. Of course those women spoke English quite well themselves. And probably could have just taught them at home, but my spending an hour a week observing a native speaker playing these games with their kids gave them the confidence they needed to do that at home.

[HLJHLJ]

From a language acquisition point of view, it would be ideal for them to have regular exposure to a second language before they are 7 months old. During the babbling phase they lose any sounds that they don't hear. So once they reach 12 months and move from babbling to recognisable vocalisations, they are already at a disadvantage. Start them learning at 2 or 3 and they have to be retaught those sounds and it will be much harder for them to learn to speak without a 'foreign' accent.

So in that sense, it's a great idea to start them young.

However, early years teaching is a very specialised area. One that many regular/content teachers wouldn't touch with someone else's bargepole, not without the correct training anyway. From the outside it is 'just' baby sitting, there's no need to formally teach them, all they require is adequate exposure and they will learn. The skill is in maintaining and controlling attention and alertness, so that the child is able to learn. There is nothing in a regular ESL training programme that would prepare a teacher for that.

So it's pretty much insane to be dumping classes with those age groups onto people who aren't trained for it. It's also quite depressing that they are wasting what could be a fantastic opportunity for the kids.

[TTTT]

[Calico]

[rxk22]

[Mr_Monkey]

[rxk22]

[gigihope]

This reply is aimed at the original post, about whether teaching children younger than three years old is possible. In my experience, which includes two years teaching at an eikaiwa where my youngest student is 6 months old, the answer is yes. I am going try not to get into the debate over the worthiness of having to teach these lessons, after all it is a part of the job I signed on for. Actually it's one of the parts of my job that I enjoy the most. Hearing a two year old say the words "red circle" and then watching him bury his grinning face in his mother's sweater is something I never get tired of.

To get to that point though, there is a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of repetition of basic English vocabulary and concepts. Obviously a student aged three years or younger is not going to be able to drill question and answer patterns, but they can absorb a whole lot in terms of letter recognition, phonics sounds, colours, shapes, animals etc. They can learn these words quite quickly, and retain them if they are given the opportunity to practice through repetition.

Repetition does not have to mean sitting a bunch of antsy-in-their-pantsy three year olds down, showing them a picture of a red circle and making them say it after you 15 times. Repetition, to me, means that whatever vocabulary you introduce one week shows up again the next week in some form, and then again later on. For example, if there is a textbook with a set of vocabulary like animal names, one week we are learning the animal names with a song, the next week (even though we might have a different set of vocabulary to learn) the animal names show up again in a game we are playing, and maybe again in a book we are reading (I am reading to them, they are repeating key words) on down the line. Obviously the younger the students are, the more repetition will be necessary.

I find in my lessons, it is good to have a large number of components (some of which repeat vocabulary and concepts for practice sake) that we go through at a rate that keeps the student's attention, and that involve singing and movement in the classroom to focus that bouncing-off-the-walls energy. I do end up feeling like an idiot a lot when I can't get the students to focus as much one week as they did the week before, but you kind of have to love that about the job too in order to survive with your sanity intact.

[OneJoelFifty]

[Cool Teacher]

[HLJHLJ]

Babies recognize language in the womb, not individual words, but speech patterns and intonation. It primes them in some way to be ready to start paying attention to language after birth. They can identify a foreign language less than a week after birth. Theoretically, exposing them to foreign speech patterns in the womb would help them to identify a second language as native rather than as 'other'. However, as far as I know the effect is only seen in terms of the language the mother speaks. In which case, having someone read to an unborn baby would be pointless.