Highlights / notes file: Introducing English to Young Children - Spoken Language - Opal Dunn
Young learners acquire English best as a living way of talking with a liked, sympathetic adult, not as an abstract subject. Playful, exaggerated ‘motherese’ talk, immediate goals and quick success keep them in.
From my highlights
- English for young children is “another way of talking about” their needs and interests with sympathetic listeners: like learning to talk with their mother.
- Motivation comes from liking the person who speaks the language (Taeschner 2005), not from liking the language.
- “We become interested in what we are good at” (Bruner, via Donaldson 1978); success motivates.
- Children are creatures of the moment: clear, immediate objectives and immediate results.
- Motherese is friendly and playful; over-dramatisation, funny voices, rhymes and silliness help both understanding and acquisition.
- The good language learner is an acquirer, not necessarily a conscious learner; learning is a partnership (Reggio Emilia: teacher–child, parent–child).
So what (Claude)
- For Starters/Movers this makes the teacher relationship a core method, not a soft extra; consistent with Read’s “relationships first”.
- Over-dramatisation works because it makes input salient (prosody, gesture), the YL version of input enhancement.
Connections
Stories as shared contexts for language · Songs carry chunks and phonology · The silent period and listen-and-do · Visible success drives motivation - and the intermediate plateau
Processed notes
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