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to self-discovery.

      The teacher’s role remains important, as the teacher is still the main source of new input of English. However, teacher-talk has broadened to introduce a wider vocabulary through mediating and modelling situations. Direct teaching is now included in quick, focused tutor-talks that give explanations about language. Young children need help to develop their self-learning strategies if they are to become independent learners.

      Young readers, who have developed their own multi-strategies to read, spell and write in L1, are impatient to do the same in English. Since they already understand the mechanics of reading, there is no need to teach them in the same way as non-reader English children. Readers only need help to find out how to transfer and reuse their existing reading strategies to read a new content. Once introduced to a multi-strategy approach to decoding English that they can speak, these children teach themselves to read. They have no need to start, like English-speaking non-readers, from the very beginning of the Synthetic Phonics Method.

      Learning language continues to depend on the triangle (consisting of child, teacher and parent) for interactive support and motivation. Suggestions are made for how to involve parents’ innate language-teaching skills in the home to consolidate children’s learning. The window of opportunity to help children absorb English with enthusiasm is limited. By the age of 10, with the onset of puberty and the influence of peer-group pressures, their learning environment changes.

      This book is about helping children acquire a good grounding in the basics of reading and writing English – and enjoying it. The many explanations and practical suggestions can be used to support a textbook or a teacher planning a school programme. What I have written is what I have observed, experienced and enjoyed with young children.

      There is no substitute for caring human interaction and adult help for learning at this stage. However, as teachers we have to be aware of the increasing appeal of screens. To keep children’s interest, we need to fire up and then stoke children’s curiosity about the world in which they will need English.

      Help me to do it myself.

      (Montessori)

       List of figures

      Figure 1 A class framework

      Figure 2 A suggested Hidden Syllabus

      Figure 3 Recognising whole words

      Figure 4 High-frequency words

      Figure 5 Classroom labels

      Figure 6 Writing a rhyme with cards

      Figure 7 Little books

      Figure 8 Storyboard for a mini-book

      Figure 9 The 37 rimes which make up nearly 500 words

      Figure 10 37 Basic phonograms

      Figure 11 A class newsletter

      Figure 12 Letter Faces

      Figure 13 Handwriting positions for right- and left-handers

      Figure 14 Ball and stick handwriting method (not encouraged)

      Figure 15 Chinese Characters

      Figure 16 Writing on tracks

      Figure 17 Structured programme for introducing small letters in simple print style

      Figure 18 Structured programme for introducing capital letters

      Figure 19 A child’s signature

      Figure 20 A note to parents

      Figure 21 A writing pattern

      Figure 22 Writing patterns for young non-readers

      Figure 23 A spelling sheet

      Figure 24 My map

      Figure 25 A class exhibition poster

      Figure 26 A storyboard

       1

       Acquiring language – The Playful Approach

       1.1 Absorbing another language

       1.2 Transitions

       1.3 Play as a form of learning

       1.4 The Playful Approach

       1.5 Free-choice time

1.1 Absorbing another language

      A young child’s ability to absorb language unconsciously, and seemingly effortlessly, is quite remarkable. It is even more astounding that the same young child, if given the right opportunities, can absorb two or three languages at more or less the same time, and use them with his or her different co-speakers correctly.

      When I was 3 years old, I spoke three different languages to three different people. I am told I never mixed up the speakers. I just talked, but I didn’t know I was speaking different languages until I was much older and my family told me. I can still speak these languages.

      (Japanese lady, aged 45)

      Young children, if circumstances are right for them, are innate, unconscious language learners. They are conscious of learning about the content of an activity, but not the language (or languages) they are using. At 5 or 6 years old they may tell you how many languages they speak and give examples, but they are not conscious of actually learning them in the way an adult is.

      Children refine their language-learning strategies as they mature, depending on the type and quality of language support within their experiences. They then have the ability to reuse their language-learning strategies unconsciously, if motivated to learn another language – such as English. Most do this with confidence if they are shepherded by adults to take part in enabling activities, and are exposed to a similar quality of language support to that of their L1 acquisition.

      By the age of 6, young children

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