Abstract Summary
I address a novel theoretical concept of language-conducive strategies. These strategies are aimed to enhance children's willingness to communicate" in L2. I present such strategies as creating a low-anxiety atmosphere, teacher and peer modeling, explicit request to use L2, elicitation strategies, teacher mediated socio-dramatic play, and creating a language area."
Abstract :
The role of language education in early childhood in promoting a child's life-long love of language and bilingual proficiency seems to be unquestionable. Children do not voluntary choose either monolingual or bilingual preschool but are subject to their parents' preferences. Their first encounter with the novel language overlaps with separation from home and meeting new actors in their lives—teachers and peers. A successful encounter with a novel language is inevitably connected to such ecological conditions as creating a low-anxiety and secure atmosphere that will be conducive to target language perception and production (Schwartz, 2018).
Building upon sociocultural theory and ecological perspective on language learning, van Lier (2004) views the process of L2 learning and its perception as mediated by diverse teachers' strategies and physical and social environments which create a language-conducive context in multilingual environment. Teachers are aware of the fact that children demonstrate mostly receptive knowledge of the language, and they help children produce output in the target language through the implementation of various language-conducive strategies, instead of passive accepting children's receptive bilingual skills for years. In this talk, I will address a novel theoretical concept of language-conducive strategies (Schwartz, 2018). These strategies are aimed "to enhance children's willingness to communicate" in a novel language (p. 16). The following strategies will be presented and illustrated: creating a low-anxiety atmosphere, teacher and peer modeling, explicit request to use L2, elicitation strategies, teacher mediated socio-dramatic play, and creating a language area. To conclude, teacher motivation is vital for the promotion of children’s willingness to use a novel language.
References:
Schwartz, M. (Ed.). (2018). Preschool Bilingual Education: Agency in Interactions between Children, Teachers, and Parents. Series Multilingual Education. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Boston, US: Kluwer Academy.
