CHILDREN LEARNING A SECOND LANGUAGE:

There is an important difference between children learning their first language and children learning a second language at school: second language children have already learned one language. So they bring with them to the  language classroom a great deal of experience of language, of life and many other natural abilities which help them to learn English.

 

 

Teachers have to make use and build these abilities and characteristics. Children learning English as a foreign language also make errors which can be seen as a sign of active learning. These errors give us evidence that both first and second language children are not just imitating what they hear, like parrots, but they are working out how the language system operates in their minds. The errors give us windows to look through and see what they have dicevered about language so far.