Educating Second Language Children

This text brings together the work of 15 elementary education experts who support an integrative approach to educating second language children. The paperback edition is a collection of articles from fourteen elementary education experts who espouse an integrative approach to second language education - one that goes beyond language teaching methodology - to cover a wide range of issues affecting the academic and social success of language minority children. The volume deals not only with second language development, but with the development of the whole child. Rather than focusing on language instruction, it addresses the entire curriculum, and instead of restricting itself to classroom learning, it examines the role of the school, family, and community.

The last two decades have yielded some important research on how first and second generation immigrant children live and study in the United States. In particular, there are some significant findings that concern young children's second language development. This book provides an overview of recent linguistic and methodological research and examines the ways in which new theoretical findings can inform classroom practice. Gordon is particularly concerned with ways of rendering instruction intellectually challenging and exciting in the primary level ESL classroom.

This edited book uses the concept of diversity in child foreign language education as a major organizing principle. Since a foreign language, most typically English, is taught globally to an increasing number of children, the variability in the process and varied learning outcomes are inescapable phenomena. This book has been constructed on the premise that heterogeneity, first, concerns young language learners, who due to the disparity in the pace of development need appropriately tailored educational solutions, and, second, it refers to a diversity of contexts in which learning takes place. The contexts can be defined on a macroscale (e.g. different countries), mesoscale (e.g. different institutions), and microscale (e.g. specific learner groups). The book consists of four thematic strands. In Part One the learner-internal causes of heterogeneity of young language learners are clarified. Part Two presents a sample of classroom studies in which learner variables, such as gender, learner preferences, and special needs are taken into account. Part Three looks at teaching materials and how they meet learners’ needs. Finally, Part Four highlights diversity issues that teachers should be prepared to face.

Practical, engaging guide to helping early childhood educators understand and address the needs of English language learners.

Practical, engaging guide to helping early childhood educators understand and address the needs of English language learners.

The age for early language learning has dropped dramatically in the past decade to include children under 6 years old, yet very little published research exists to support the implementation of such programmes. Drawing on a synthesis of theory, research and practice, this edited volume makes an innovative contribution to literature concerning language education for very young children. It explores language learning in a wide range of geographical contexts with reference to second and foreign language learning, bilingualism and plurilingualism with children under the age of 6 years old. Chapters present discussion around teacher education, policy-making, international case studies, school and home-based projects, code switching and language use, and methodologies and approaches. Early Years Second Language Education: International perspectives on theory and practice will be essential reading for researchers, academics, teacher trainers, and post-graduate students in the fields of early years education, foreign and second language education, language didactics and teacher education.

Adopting a learner-centred approach that places an emphasis on hands-on child SL methodology, this book illustrates the practices used to teach young second language learners in different classroom contexts: (1) English-as-an-Additional-Language-or-Dialect (EAL/D) – both intensive EAL/D and EAL/D in the mainstream (2) Language-Other-Than-English (LOTE) (3) Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL), (4) Indigenous (5) Foreign-Language (FL). It will be particularly useful to undergraduate teachers to build upon the literacy unit they undertake in the first years of their course to explore factors that constitute an effective child SL classroom and, in practical terms, how to develop such a classroom. The pedagogical strategies for teaching young language learners in the six chapters are firmly guided by research-based findings, enabling not only pre-service teachers but also experienced teachers to make informed choices of how to effectively facilitate the development of the target language, empowering them to assume an active and effective role of classroom practitioners.

Motivated by the need to bring together researchers involved in the acquisition, learning and teaching of the Croatian language and foreign languages to learners at lower elementary level, the recurring scientific conferences Children and Languages Today were established in 2001. At the time the Croatian academic community was short of a conference that was dedicated entirely to critical thinking and the exchange of research findings, outcomes and experience in these particular study areas. As it turns out, Children and Languages Today has served as an incentive for other conferences and meetings in Croatia that continue to promote research in the fields of first and second language acquisition of young learners. Children and Languages Today: First and Second Language Literacy Development is the outcome of the conference held in 2017 at the Faculty of Education, University of Osijek. It is a collection of papers by experts on a wide range of topics that include developing literacy in teaching first and second languages and encompassing different fields of science and expertise, such as children's literature, bilingualism, metaphor usage, translation, vocabulary, narrative and orthography. This book hopes to shed light on and open up an array of questions in the area of literacy development.