Language Development

    According to the Piaget ´s theory, children are active learners, Piaget in what he called the constructivism claims that children construct their knowledge for themselves by making sense of the environment, using the process of assimilation, children can assimilate information that fit in the children ´s own interpretation of the world.

    

     Piaget also refers to the adaptation of the knowledge gathered which is a process of accommodation in which children

Adapt the new information they gather from their parents and teachers, without this process there are not real learning process in the children ´s mind.

     Having in mind this theory, my job as a teacher is to give a better pronunciation while giving them new vocabulary, when children utter new words in English teachers have to help them to say it correctly, so that they can adapt themselves to the new expressions. It is the teacher ´s responsibility to serve as a model for young children.

In Other hands Krashen, (1982) affirms that some experts think that children acquire the language while adults learn the language, then is important to be correct in the content that is going to be presented to the children.

      In the Piaget ´s framework appears what he thought was the process of acquiring the principles of formal logic in children.

 From birth to two years children learn to interact with the environment by manipulating objects around him. From two to seven years of age, children’s thinking is reliant more in perception but gradually become more and more capable of logical thinking. From seven to eleven years children´s thinking resemble logical adult-like thinking, they develop the ability to apply logical thinking in some area, math, and science or map reading. Then is important to have this information in mind, that way, the teacher can adapt material to the children according with their age.

     When teaching a second language is important to present a variety of strategies in order to cover the need of different learning styles of the students,

According to the Gardner ´s multiple intelligent table, students have different styles to learn, those are linguistic, logico-mathematical, musical, spatial, interpersonal and others.

      According to Piaget, children under seven are egocentric and they cannot see the world from other perspective out of their own reality. A psychologist called Margaret Donaldson proved the contrary of Piaget in the preoperational stage, she established that the instrument Piaget used for his experiments were misunderstood by children, according to her when a children is presented in familiar task and familiar environment introduced by familiar adults using the language that make sense to them, they show sign of logical thinking much earlier than Piaget claimed. So is important to know our students and be familiar with them, to see how they grow in terms of the abilities they develop in our classes.

   

    

      At home with parents and siblings, children are confident communicators they do not need to be explicit and precise with language use at home. Parents naturally scaffold their children ´s language in dialogs. According to studies of Gordon Wells,(1981) good interactions offer correction, valuable feedback and supportive encouragement, children who are talked to and read to in a regular basis start with advantages at school.

So is important to at least try to give a familiar environment to the children in our classes, in order to get a better development from them, our classes need to be more interactive and full of clear feedback for them to be more in a natural space.

     Children can acquire two languages from the birth, this process is called simultaneous process, The simultaneous acquisition occurred when children learn two languages at the same time. This situation can occur in a mixed nationality marriage, one parent may speak French to the children while the mother may speak only English, when this strategy is systematically followed in the house the children can learn two languages simultaneously.

    

    

References

Pinter (2012) Teaching Young Learners.