for Key Stage 2, practitioners have an opportunity to help children
prepare. Opal Dunn considers the best approach.
In this new academic year Key Stage 2, Year 3 children will begin to learn a foreign language at school. The choice of which of the major world languages to introduce has already been made by individual primary schools.
This means that UK-educated young children will grow up, like more than half the world's children of the same age, knowing that they are expected to and can successfully pick up and use another world language.
The curriculum change provides all state-educated seven-year-olds with opportunities to re-use their personal language learning skills to pick up a foreign language. It is a major investment in children's future as many employers - unlike those in the time of the children's monolingual grandparents - will expect them to have some knowledge of a foreign language and cultures.
Bilingual and bicultural awareness implies a broadening of thinking to acquire additional skills beyond speaking and reading a foreign language. These skills include being capable of critical thinking to make choices and think laterally.
They are also likely to have developed more profound understanding as they find out that people of other cultures may behave, and even think, differently. They can appreciate that there can be at least two ways to solve the same problem.
As language and culture are intertwined, focused foreign language activities can help children gradually become bicultural or even multicultural; French is not only spoken in France and Spanish is also spoken in South America and regions of the US. Children introduced to Chinese will not only absorb the tones spoken by the model speaker, but find out about Chinese New Year and Moon Festival.
In preparation for this earlier introduction, primary school teachers have received specialist training in teaching techniques needed for younger children, which differ from the grammar-based teaching at secondary level.
To be successful, teachers have to understand how young children absorb language and what sort of language-rich activities will harness their innate drive and enthusiasm to acquire a new language.
PARENTS' ROLE
Up to the age of eight or nine, young children can still absorb blocks of language from dialogues accompanying shared activities.
However, to help the child, the adult needs to know how to skilfully lead the language input, inserting the same 'playful mode' mothers use effectively to make routine dialogues like dressing more fun and personal. 'Non, non, NON! C'est comme ca!' ('No, no, NO. It's like this!')
It is often overlooked that mothers are their children's first language teachers and have found out, during two years of teaching, how to insert fun into dialogues when interest flags. Having guided their child from zero to gain fluency, mothers know intimately how best their child learns and uses language.
Although some young children may already speak two or more languages at home, the parents of these children - like parents of monolingual, English-speaking children - may express concern that learning a different language at Year 3 or younger may hinder their children's progress in English literacy.
Parents need reassuring. Research now proves that supporting the learning of a foreign language in the early years increases a child's ability in English.
However, as when a baby learns to speak, results rarely show in the first lessons, as young children still need a mini-silent period in which to work out how to re-use their language learning skills to make the new sounds.
For children to be successful, teachers and mothers have to help them with simple shared activities, to begin unconsciously to re-use their own language-learning skills to pick up the new language.
Once children have worked this out, their potential to acquire a foreign language should not be underestimated or judged by the way adults may have learned language academically at secondary school.
Learning a new language, like learning to speak a home language, involves the same supportive triangle consisting of the mother and home, the teacher or carer, and the child. To be supportive, adults need to tune into what the child is learning and look out for opportunities to support and encourage them.
Showing interest and encouragement helps to develop a positive mindset. A single remark such as 'I was never any good at French', or referring to Chinese 'as a singsong, chinchong language' can cut down enthusiasm. Although learning a new language takes place at Key Stage 2, it is likely to have a knock-on effect in nursery and Reception classes, especially where children have older brothers and sisters.
NURSERY AND RECEPTION
Parents and teachers should not underestimate nurseryand Reception-aged children's ability to absorb the foreign languages that they hear. They should also not compare language ability with an ability to learn concepts like numbers.
Very young children, including native English-speaking children, can - if given the right supported opportunities - proudly speak three or four languages, switching languages to match their co-speaker and rarely making any mistakes.
Adults sometimes overlook that very young children absorb what is spoken within their hearing and are surprised by what chunks of language they have absorbed and can repeat. For example, a three-and-a-half-year-old boy, who had listened to his seven-and-a-half-year-old brother and Japanese teacher repeating the Japanese alphabet, the hiragana, suddenly recited it at breakfast.
He appeared satisfied that he could say something, even if he did not understand it. His pronunciation imitated that of the teacher. His family's immediate positive response motivated.
Creating a positive attitude to foreign language learning is vital for success. Nursery and Reception staff can do much to create positive mindsets from an early age by:
- - accepting children may be picking up and experiencing older siblings' foreign language experiences and want to talk about them
- - supporting and encouraging any incidental foreign language face-to-face dialogues, including scaffolding in English or the foreign language
- - dispelling mothers' worries that learning a foreign language at an early age might interfere with learning English.
Language acquired lasts for life and, even if not used for some time, can, with focus, be retrieved. Even if there might be a gap between what is consolidated and enjoyed in nursery and Reception classes and Key Stage 2, very young children will have discovered, within a caring and more personal environment, that they can re-use their English language learning skills to acquire a new foreign language. Success and the 'feel good' factor enhance language use and thus learning.
Lifelong attitudes to learning are known to be formed early. If young children can leave nursery or Reception classes with positive mind- sets about how to acquire and enjoy using a foreign language, they will be well prepared to focus on a learning a foreign language in a Key Stage 2 classroom. Nursery settings and Reception classes can provide ideal informal situations in which to develop foreign language learning readiness. Being ready to learn is an important precursor for successful later, more formal curriculum teaching and learning.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING IN THE EARLY YEARS
Encourage teachers, practitioners and parents with a GCSE foreign language to rediscover their foreign language ability and enjoy supporting, but not formally teaching, children their first steps in counting, naming and using simple phrases such as please and thank you.
Remember that communicating and enjoying is more important than the correct accent at this stage. Young children can change their accent to copy their co-speaker; they do this with local dialects. However, be prepared for children to correct adult pronunciation as it may not match that of their model, which may be their siblings.
HOW TO SUPPORT CHILDREN'S LEARNING
- Focus on one foreign language (liaise with your local primary school about which one to choose).
- Spoken (or song words) should be established first. Check YouTube for songs. There should be no teaching of reading, but children can become conscious of a different writing system, for example, Chinese characters.
- Tune into what children say, sometimes asking them to repeat. Questions like 'What did you learn in French today?' should not be asked, as children need time before they are ready to repeat new language.
- Create opportunities to show off what children know at school and at home. For example, 'Listen, Ann can say "Voici ma main. Elle a cinq doigts." En voici deux. Combien?' Or 'Bob can sing in French (Frere Jacques).
Let's all sing in French. Bravo.'
- Stimulate children's interest when the novelty of a foreign language is wearing thin by making a snack time of, for example, French foods such as croissant, pain au chocolat and baguette.
- Stereotypes are a way into a culture and can be used if they are current and not old-fashioned images (French men no longer wear berets).
- Play simple games like Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil. As in Grandmother's Footsteps, the counter faces a wall or tree and hides his face as he counts and then turns round as he says soleil (sun). Anyone seen moving returns to the starting line. The first to touch the counter while he is counting becomes the new counter.
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