How can young children best learn languages?

The British Council's Tracey Chapelton explains how parents of young children can lay the foundations for success. Children's brains are highly active Your child is unique, but what all children have in common is natural curiosity and an innate ability to learn. Kuhl states that babies and young children are geniuses at acquiring a second language. 'Babies', she says, 'can discriminate all the sounds of all languages... and that's remarkable because you and I can't do that. We're culture-bound listeners. By exposing children to other languages at an early age, you are giving them the opportunity to tap into their natural ability to hear and distinguish the sounds of other languages, and their capacity to make sense of what they are hearing. Children make language-learning look easy Communication is something that children do to help them achieve something else, and they are blissfully unaware of the enormous amount of learning taking place. Are young children less afraid of making mistakes?

https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/how-can-young-children-best-learn-languages

Enhancing the Language Development of Young Children When we first brought our daughter home from the hospital I was inexperienced. Mother came to help and in her always wise and gentle way said, "Honey, you need to talk to that baby." What wonderful advice! Mother's counsel paid great dividends and I remembered it when our granddaughter was born. Does being bilingual make you smarter? Language teacher and researcher Miguel Angel Muñoz explains the latest research on how being bilingual affects your brain, ahead of a British Council seminar in Cardiff on whether learning a foreign language makes you smarter. You can watch the live-streamed seminar on Tuesday, 3 June. More than half the world's population uses two or more languages every day

Getting the right balance between adult-led and child-initiated learning As an early years practitioner you will know the importance of creating the right balance between adult-led and child-initiated learning. Help all children learn and develop with this guide. Adult-led activities are based on our own professional understanding of what we should teach young children and what experiences they should have. 6 Types of Play: How Children's Play Becomes More Social Play is a serious business. The pioneering developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky thought that, in the preschool years, play is the leading source of development. Through play children learn and practice many basic social skills.

12 Simple Tips for Improving Your Spoken English Without a Speaking Partner So, you’re all by yourself. Forever alone. Okay, maybe you’re not forever alone, but right now you need to practice English alone. How young children learn English as another language By Opal Dunn, educational consultant and author Introduction Young children are natural language acquirers; they are self-motivated to pick up language without conscious learning, unlike adolescents and adults. They have the ability to imitate pronunciation and work out the rules for themselves. Any idea that learning to talk in English is difficult does not occur to them unless it’s suggested by adults, who themselves probably learned English academically at a later age through grammar-based text books. Read the notes below about young children learning English as another language.

The Power of Evening Routines The word “structure” can evoke less than positive associations. It suggests constraints, which are never a good thing, right? Wrong. It turns out that everyone benefits from a certain amount of daily structure, so long as that structure is pleasant, productive, and meaningful. Whether it’s the most inventive minds in history, or those people who live in good health past 100, a daily routine or set of micro-routines is correlated with productivity, health, and longevity.

Importance of play for babies & children Australian Government Department of Education and Training (2009). Belonging, being and becoming: The early years learning framework for Australia. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 19 June 2019 from Cole-Hamilton, I. (2011). Getting it right for play: The power of play: An evidence base.