Language is a Social Practice so the Social Context is Critically Important to Success
The ALL Strategy provides the most effective social context for language learning in two main respects:
1. Learning from (and/or with) models with whom the child identifies strongly, and who are frequently available to model interest in and use of the language.
2. Relating to an identity which is relevant to every child.
1. Learning from (and/or with) models with whom the child identifies strongly, and who are frequently available to model interest in and use of the language.
2. Relating to an identity which is relevant to every child.
The family is the strongest social context for language learning....
Babies survive or thrive by accepting everything that their parents do as valuable.
They have every imaginable motivation to learn the languages their parents model, and plenty of frequent exposure. |
.... the child's everyday teacher is the next best alternative.
A child's main teacher is also a generalist and knows most things that are important for a child to learn.
If s/he doesn't know another language and isn't interested to learn one, what do we expect a child to learn from that? If s/he does learn and teach another language, it can be practiced a little every day- another strategy that works! |
Not every child in the class is Greek but....
.....they are all global citzens.
It is an equally valid identity for every child and empowers them to embrace other identities, which may not apply to all class members, later. every child is a member of the global community->
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