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The Early The Better Stands True For ESL
Author : Sarah Werner
Submitted : 2010-10-18 05:39:29 Word Count : 894 Popularity: 20
Tags: education, english, language, learning, communication, esl
Every parent is willing to provide the best education possible for their children and the first years of life are most vital in forming the future character of a grown-up person. The basic knowledge and skills the child learns and develops at an early age becomes the foundation for his or her further self-education and success in life.
Children are real quick-learners absorbing everything literally at a wink. So growing number of caring parents are trying to teach their kids English as a Second Language lessons as early as they could, even while the kids hardly started to master their mother tongue. Nowadays English has become so widespread as a world language beyond any boundaries that without speaking English you won't have a chance to live as a global citizen. Let's briefly discuss some of the pros and cons of such a parental decision for an early ESL education of their children.
It's true that the older one gets it becomes harder for him or her to learn. The age bring with it natural learning limitations. The human brain is developing most dramatically when the person is young - the brain doubles when the baby reaches 9 months and triples upon reaching 3 years old. So the child learns new things many times quicker than an adult would. It stands true with learning foreign languages also. Knowing this the earlier you start your studies the better results you could achieve. Most specialists agree that the best age for learning anything new is before approximately 7 years old. For instance, world renowned scholars in the field of psychology Wilder Penfield and Lamar Roberts say that the best age for learning is between 4 to 8 years old. Whether to start your consistent studies before the child gets 4 or 5 is the issue but after that age is the most right time without any doubt.
Putting regular efforts into your English lessons with your kid either at home or at an ESL school would quite soon bring the fruits that you would be amazed of. For example, it's ideal if one of the parents could speak English with the kid all the time. Conversation is one of the best ways to learn and it has no age limitations. Then your child will have the same fluency in English almost as he would in his native language. Teaching English should be consistent and natural to a child. If you would want to start teaching your small kid understanding English language grammar it won't probably make any reasonable effect. It makes no sense to start explaining your child some new fancy words or explicit grammar rules if he doesn't even able to understand the meaning of these words or doesn't know them well even in his own language. The child should first form the clear notion of his native language before you start your English language lessons.
It's best to organize English lessons with the child in the form of a game. The child would start repeating after you the pronunciation of words and that would be the real spoken English lessons. The child would copy you as all children do and would learn bit by bit, day after day.
Psychologists believe that the things learned at a young age would stick with the person all throughout his life. But it's within the nature of child's memory that the kid learns only what he listens and repeats numerous times. So once decided to start teaching your kids English, it's better to keep going on. If you think your child has enough spoken skills in his own language and is ready enough for starting his ESL studies, then approach it with all your parental seriousness.
You can teach your kid only in the form of spoken English. Ideal if the child could communicate often with English native speakers to develop English listening right. It also give an effect of immersion into the language environment. The right English speaking pronunciation, learning the pronunciation of words and whole phrases, understanding English grammar rules are the most crucial issues to consider. So it is really important who is teaching your child English and how the teacher does it.
A good piece of advice might be to avoid usual and conventional methods of ESL study for children of pre-school age and even for the first graders. Choose well the teaching methodology. Prefer to utilize any kind of game approach with the use of bright visual tools in the form of certain pictures, cartoons, toys, bodily movements or even theatrical decorated performances. Use songs and dance. Body language is the key for spoken language. While you are interacting with a child continuously repeat certain easy phrases of sentences that the child would remember. Repeating and learning poems is indeed a wonderful method to learn english for kids. Recent scientific investigations by the International society for time studies showed that the verse dimensions and rhymes correlates deep with the intrinsic abilities of our brain which itself is functioning rhythmically. Each line of a verse should sound at least three seconds so that it could be easily accepted and reasoned by a brain.
Author's Resource Box
Sarah suggests to start your English studies with auxiliary verbs and nouns in English.
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