Young children can be excellent teachers!

Young children who are just learning English gain a tremendous amount just by hearing it and using it in social interactions with their peers. Getting young children to talk to each other, to have conversations, is a powerful tool for early childhood educators.  Here are a few ways to encourage language-learning interactions:

• Teach English-speaking children to initiate conversations with other children
  Teach how to make eye contact. Model using gestures, short sentences, and trying more than once to get your meaning across.

• Encourage interactions between children
  Use prompts like,
  “Let’s ask Phillip, ‘Can we have some blocks?’”  or
  "Would you please invite Sandi to come and play with us?”

• Let children “read” to each other
  After you read a picture book together a number of times, have the children “read” the book to each other in pairs.

Learning a language can be hard work, so be sure to give young language-learners a break when needed. Manipulative activities that don’t require as much language can fill this need.

To learn more about serving preschool English language learners see:

Tabors, P. (1997). One child, two languages.  A guide for preschool educators of children learning English as a second language. Baltimore:  Paul Brookes.

Tokuhama-Espinosa, T (2001). Raising multilingual children:  Foreign language acquisition and children. Westport, CT:  Bergin & Garvey.