© 1994 by Oxford University Press
Articles |
Organizing the world: children's concepts and categories, and implications for the teaching of English
Currently Lecturer in English Language Teaching in the School of Education, University of Leeds, working with teachers from Britain and overseas. She has an MA from the University of York and is working towards a PhD in the development of metaphor in children. She has taught English as a first, second, and foreign language in Tanzania and the UK, and has trained primary teachers for mother tongue education and TESOL in the UK, Malta, and Norway.
The number of young learners of English is growing rapidly, with publication of coursebooks to match. The theoretical debate taking place alongside this expansion has been less dramatic, with ideas from primary education being put together with communicative language teaching methodology to produce a hybrid and somewhat ad hoc framework for the teaching of young learners (those under 14 years). It is perhaps time that this branch of ELT began to produce its own applied linguistics through an interaction of practice, theory, and research.
This paper aims to assist that process through the presentation of recent findings on cognitive development, and the linking of these to language development and thus to the learning of a second language, resulting in a view of language learning as the acquisition and development of ‘expertise’. This theoretical framework draws on work in prototype theory, concept formation, and knowledge restructuring. The theoretical background is applied to the learning of vocabulary and the social nature of the category structure of English lexis, and to the structure and content of stories for learners of English. Examples from readers are used to illustrate how the selection of grammatical structures, vocabulary, and discourse markers can help or hinder the learner. The paper concludes with further questions prompted by the application of aspects of cognitive science to the teaching of English.