Early Teaching of a Second Language: Cognitive and Social Development

Sensitive, Social and Cognitive Development in Young Children

Unit 1. Sensitive, Social and Cognitive Development in Young Children.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 CONTENTS 1.1 Basic aspects of very young children's learning 1.2 The importance of motivation 1.3 Skills and objectives in the Nursery Education period 2. BIBLIOGRAPHY 3. ONLINE RESOURCES

Sensitive, Social and Cognitive Development in Young Children

Basic Aspects of Very Young Children's Learning

Developmental cognitive neuroscience experiments have established that many fundamental processes which underpin thinking, reasoning and learning are present and fully functioning at birth or become available within the first 4-5 years of life. During this period, the brain increases in size fourfold, largely as a consequence of a rapid increase in the number of synaptic connections between neurons in the cerebral cortex. Whilst there is no doubt that there are genetic and physiological differences between brains, the evidence suggests that each child's development and learning are highly dependent upon the type of physical and social environment in which they live, since these synaptic connections arise from and are selectively adapted by the child's specific experiences.

Children at the pre-school age (3 to 6 years old) are in the period of playing, discovering the world, learning to express themselves, observing the near environment and they are getting ready to learn many things, including foreign languages. This is a crucial phase in their lives because they achieve major developmental milestones, such as showing affection for other people, knowing the names of the colors or hopping on one foot.

There are four types of developmental milestones:

• physical (walking, crawling)
• cognitive (asking 'why' questions, becoming aware of the difference between the present and the past)
• social and emotional (follow rules and directions, noticing other children and playing with them)
• communication and language (learning new words, combining words and gestures).

Sensitive, Social and Cognitive Development in Young Children

Basic Cognitive Processes in Early Development

Basic cognitive processes at this stage of their development include:

• Imitation - children learn through observation. Young children are proficient at learning through imitation from a very early age. Studies show that babies, a few hours after their birth, already start imitating behavior they observe (Paulus, 2019). Children imitate behaviors but also the production of sounds in their native language.
• Induction - A second learning process which is in place from birth is statistical or inductive learning, namely the process by which patterns and regularities in the stream of experience are identified. Inductive learning underpins the ways in which the human visual and auditory systems develop and clearly forms the foundation of a very large part of human learning. This capacity to transfer learning or 'generalize' from one situation to another, explains how children adapt to new situations, and start to tackle new challenges and problems.
• Executive functions - They involve not only constructing a bank of knowledge, but becoming able to use that knowledge appropriately to solve problems, to reason and to plan. It is the development of the following basic executive functions which influence children's abilities to apply their knowledge in various situations, to control their cognitive, emotional and motivational processes, and to learn intentionally.

The most important executive functions include:

• Inhibition - being able to restrain one's instinctive reactions
• Attentional flexibility in applying ideas or rules
• Working memory, the ability to hold information in mind while processing it.

Each of these functions is vital to the processes whereby children develop the metacognitive and self-regulatory abilities which enable them to become effective learners.

Sensitive, Social and Cognitive Development in Young Children

Planning Lessons for Young Children

To sum up, there are many things we must bear in mind when planning lessons activities for very young children: psychological, emotional and physical development are essential factors.

In a practical approach, we must plan activities following simple rules:

'Children cannot concentrate for a long period of time, so we need to plan short activities and change activities every five or ten minutes. Bear in mind that the attention span of children increases in 2-3 minutes as they get a year older. It is estimated that the attention span of a three-year-old child is from 6 to 9 minutes, increasing to 8 to 12 for four-year-olds and to 10 to 15 minutes for five-year-olds (Mcilroy, n.d.).

V Children are very enthusiastic if they like what they do, and give up quickly if they do not like what they are asked to do, so we must use our imagination and creativity and contents should be taught through stories, rhymes, songs ....

V Children are very sensitive and need to show their emotions. They are also quite self- centered and love talking about themselves.

The good capacity for imitation and some other aspects such as their spontaneity and lack of inhibition are good for learning of intonation and pronunciation, which is difficult for adults. Take into account that even at this early age, already girls show more signs of social inhibition than boys (Balda and Duhan, 2010), so maybe you will need to encourage girls further.

Children learn very quickly, but they have a short-term memory, so we need to use recycling activities and routines, since they need them both in their lives and the classroom and feel secure and protected by them. Thanks to routines, children know what to expect next in their daily lives and their environment becomes more predictable for them.

Adopting a multi-sensorial approach is a much recommended teaching technique for young children, since they need to use more than one sense. They especially need to hear and see. Some ideas for multisensory activities are the following ones:

Sensitive, Social and Cognitive Development in Young Children

• when you are teaching the alphabet, you can have the children make the letters with pipe cleaners or clay
• you can also use singing rhymes to teach the alphabet song
• the children can make gestures to indicate phonemes (sounds). For instance, the s sound in Jolly Phonics is the movement of a snake undulating

The Importance of Motivation

The word "motivation" has two meanings:

V The need or reason for doing something. What is your motivation to study English?

Passion for doing something. He lacks motivation, so he'll never speak English.

At the same time, the term motivation is based on two concepts:

• Direction: Why someone decided to carry out an action Intensity: How long he will sustain his interest.
• Motivation is directly related to our needs as human beings:

Sensitive, Social and Cognitive Development in Young Children

Self- actualisation achieving one's full potential, including creative activities

Self-fulfillment needs

Esteem needs prestige, feeling of accomplishment

Psychological needs

Belongingness & love needs intimate relationships, friends

Safety needs security, safety

Basic needs

Physiological needs food, water, warmth, rest

A range of empirical studies have confirmed the relationships between cognitive and motivational aspects. Moreover, motivation seems to be more important

Sensitive, Social and Cognitive Development in Young Children

than other capacities, so it is really important to motivate our students from an early stage.

The motivation of early learners focuses mainly on three aspects:

• 'self-efficacy': children's belief that they can improve their abilities through effort, leading to a 'mastery' frame-of-mind. Practice makes perfect and it is important that we instill in our young students the idea that by repeatedly trying something, they will eventually master it.
• interest: leading to engagement and involvement frames-of-mind. The child knows that mastering this skill or behavior will bring a benefit. This is why prizes work so well with young children.
• 'self-determination': the satisfaction of children's needs for feelings of competence, autonomy and 'relatedness' (positive social relationships). Children become more independent and they gain satisfaction when they master the skills of 'big children.'

Although the process of motivational awareness is developed in the first 7 years, when it enables children to start to learn deliberately, it would be a mistake to delay introducing children to important ideas until this stage is reached, because important learning can take place through experience and in playful contexts in younger children, both in their own independent activity and through interaction with adults.

Young children learn from everything they do. They are naturally curious; they want to explore and discover. If their explorations bring pleasure or success, they will want to learn more. During these early years, children form attitudes about learning that will last a lifetime.

Children who receive the right sort of support and encouragement during these years will be creative, adventurous learners throughout their lives. Children who do not receive this sort of support and interaction are likely to have a much different attitude about learning later in life.

Sensitive, Social and Cognitive Development in Young Children

Cultural Competence in Second Language Teaching

When teaching a second language, we have to take into account the importance of the cultural competence to motivate our students: Speaking another language means adopting a new culture. If you love this culture and you empathize with English speakers, you will be motivated to approach their language.

You learn better and faster because you want to be integrated in a culture you love. Our desire to learn a language (our motivation) will be inevitably affected by our attitude and perceptions of the speakers of the language and their culture.

Students at infant education probably do not know anything about the culture of English-speaking countries and you are the one bringing it to the classroom, so it is important to relate the culture of English-speaking countries with things (cupcakes), characters (Peppa Pig) and moments (Halloween) they love. In unit 3, we will speak about the use of music. Music can also be used to promote the knowledge of the culture of English-speaking countries.

If we want a L2 class to be successful, there are 3 kinds of language-related values we must promote:

• Intrinsic values: Students' interest in the interaction with the culture represented by the target language. Intrinsic motivation is related to the satisfaction you get when you master an activity. For instance, children derive joy when they finally master the pronunciation of a phoneme that caused them trouble (e.g., because they already have problems with that phoneme in their native language or because this phoneme does not exist in their native language).
• Integrative values: They are associated with the students' interest of the language learning process and the activities related to it. The student wants to learn the language to integrate in a culture. For instance, children living in a country where English is the dominant language, wish to learn English to integrate in the culture and society of their country of adoption by becoming bilingual.
• Instrumental values: They are related to the practical use of the language in the outside world. In this case, the students seek to learn the language to derive a