How young children learn English as another language

Young children learn language naturally and unconsciously. Read our article to find out more about the factors that influence how young children learn English.

By Opal Dunn, educational consultant and author

Introduction

Young children are natural language acquirers; they are self-motivated to pick up language without conscious learning, unlike adolescents and adults. They have the ability to imitate pronunciation and work out the rules for themselves. Any idea that learning to talk in English is difficult does not occur to them unless it’s suggested by adults, who themselves probably learned English academically at a later age through grammar-based text books.

Read the notes below about young children learning English as another language. You can also download these notes as a booklet. Right-click on the link below to download the booklet to your computer. You may print this booklet.

The advantages of beginning early

  • Young children are still using their individual, innate language-learning strategies to acquire their home language and soon find they can also use these strategies to pick up English.
  • Young children have time to learn through play-like activities. They pick up language by taking part in an activity shared with an adult. They firstly make sense of the activity and then get meaning from the adult’s shared language.
  • Young children have more time to fit English into the daily programme. School programmes tend to be informal and children’s minds are not yet cluttered with facts to be stored and tested. They may have little or no homework and are less stressed by having to achieve set standards.
  • Children who have the opportunity to pick up a second language while they are still young appear to use the same innate language-learning strategies throughout life when learning other languages. Picking up third, fourth, or even more languages is easier than picking up a second.
  • Young children who acquire language rather than consciously learn it, as older children and adults have to, are more likely to have better pronunciation and feel for the language and culture. When monolingual children reach puberty and become more self-conscious, their ability to pick up language diminishes and they feel they have to consciously study English through grammar-based programmes. The age at which this change occurs depends greatly on the individual child’s developmental levels as well as the expectations of their society.

Stages in picking up English

Spoken language comes naturally before reading and writing.

Silent period
When babies learn their home language, there is a ‘silent period’, when they look and listen and communicate through facial expression or gestures before they begin to speak. When young children learn English, there may be a similar ‘silent period’ when communication and understanding may take place before they actually speak any English words.

During this time parents should not force children to take part in spoken dialogue by making them repeat words. Spoken dialogues should be one-sided, the adult’s talk providing useful opportunities for the child to pick up language. Where the adult uses parentese (an adjusted form of speech) to facilitate learning, the child may use many of the same strategies they used in learning their home language.

Beginning to talk
After some time, depending on the frequency of English sessions, each child (girls often more quickly than boys) begins to say single words (‘cat’, ‘house’) or ready-made short phrases (‘What’s that?’, ‘It’s my book’, ‘I can’t’, ‘That’s a car’, ‘Time to go home’) in dialogues or as unexpected statements. The child has memorised them, imitating the pronunciation exactly without realising that some may consist of more than one word. This stage continues for some time as they child picks up more language using it as a short cut to dialogue before they are ready to create their own phrases.

Building up English language
Gradually children build up phrases consisting of a single memorised word to which they add words from their vocabulary (‘a dog’, ‘a brown dog’, ‘a brown and black dog’) or a single memorised language to which they add their own input (‘That’s my chair’, ‘Time to play’). Depending on the frequency of exposure to English and the quality of experience, children gradually begin to create whole sentences.

Understanding

Understanding is always greater than speaking and young children’s ability to comprehend should not be underestimated, as they are used to understanding their home language from a variety of context clues. Though they may not understand everything they hear in their home language, children grasp the gist – that is they understand a few important words and decipher the rest using different clues to interpret the meaning. With encouragement they soon transfer their ‘gist’ understanding skills to interpret meaning in English.

Frustration

After the initial novelty of English sessions, some young children become frustrated by their inability to express their thoughts in English. Others want to speak quickly in English as they can in their home language. Frustration can often be overcome by providing children with ‘performance’ pieces like ‘I can count to 12 in English’ or very simple rhymes, which consist of ready-made phrases.

Mistakes

Children should not be told they have made a mistake because any correction immediately demotivates. Mistakes may be part of the process of working out grammar rules of English or they may be a fault in pronunciation. ‘I goed’ soon becomes ‘went’ if the child hears the adult repeat back ‘yes, you went’; or if the adult hears ‘zee bus’ and repeats ‘the bus’. As in learning their home language, if children have an opportunity to hear the adult repeat the same piece of language correctly, they will self-correct in their own time.

Gender differences

Boys’ brains develop differently from girls’ and this affects how boys pick up language and use it. Sometimes mixed classes make little provision for boys, who may be overshadowed by girls’ natural ability to use language. If young boys are to reach their potential, they need some different language experiences with girls and their achievements should not be compared with those of girls.

Language-learning environments

Young children find it more difficult to pick up English if they are not provided with the right type of experiences, accompanied by adult support using ‘parentese’ techniques.

  • Young children need to feel secure and know that there is some obvious reason for using English.
  • Activities need to be linked to some interesting everyday activities about which they already know, eg sharing an English picture book, saying a rhyme in English, having an ‘English’ snack.
  • Activities are accompanied by adult language giving a running commentary about what is going on and dialogues using adjusted parentese language.
  • English sessions are fun and interesting, concentrating on concepts children have already understood in their home language. In this way children are not learning two things, a new concept as well as new language, but merely learning the English to talk about something they already know.
  • Activities are backed up by specific objects, where possible, as this helps understanding and increases general interest.

Reading

Children who can already read in their home language generally want to find out how to read in English. They already know how to decode words in their home language to get meaning from text and, if not helped to decode in English, may transfer their home language-decoding techniques and end up reading English with the home language accent.

Before they can decode English, young children need to know the 26 alphabet letter names and sounds. As English has 26 letters but on average 44 sounds (in standard English), introducing the remaining sounds is better left until children have more experience in using language and reading,

Beginning reading in English goes easily if young children already know the language they are trying to read. Many children work out by themselves how to read in English if they have shared picture books with adults or learned rhymes, as they are likely to have memorised the language. Reading what they know by heart is an important step in learning to read as it gives children opportunities to work out how to decode simple words by themselves. Once children have built up a bank of words they can read, they feel confident and are then ready for a more structured approach.

Parental support

Children need to feel that they are making progress. They need continual encouragement as well as praise for good performance, as any success motivates. Parents are in an ideal position to motivate and so help their children learn, even if they have only basic English themselves and are learning alongside their young children.

By sharing, parents can not only bring their child’s language and activities into family life, but can also influence their young children’s attitudes to language learning and other cultures. It is now generally accepted that most lifelong attitudes are formed by the age of eight or nine.

Further reading:

If you are interested in finding out more about how children learn languages we suggest the following websites:

Comments

Hi ummi1002,

Thanks for your comment! It's great that you are going to help your son learn English. Don't worry if your own English isn't perfect. The most important thing is to enjoy this experience together and I'm sure that you will both learn a lot along the way!

This article is all about how to start teaching your children at home. 

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/helping-your-child/how-start-teaching-kids-english-home

You'll see a lot of points which you mention in your plan, and some more ideas too. 16 months could be rather young for learning letters. Why don't you start by naming the things that he sees around him in his everyday life, for example food, clothes, objects in the home etc. 

Have you seen our video tips section? You can watch some other parents teaching English at home to get more ideas.

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/video-tips

And don't forget our LearnEnglish Parents Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/LearnEnglishParents.BritishCouncil/

You'll find lots of ideas for supporting your child's learning and you can connect with other parents too.

I hope that helps. Good luck and have fun!

 

Best wishes,

Jo (LearnEnglish Kids team)

Submitted by Irsa on Sat, 05/09/2020 - 09:53

Permalink
Hi, I am born and raised In Pakistan came to U.K. 10 years ago graduated (BSC Hons) and completed my ACCA, as a parent I do not have president British accent or proper British grammar but I can speak English as I work in investment banking, My daughter just started her reception in private school she has always been to nurseries as both of parents work full time so English has become her first language instead of Urdu. Recently one of my British born friend given me advice (as we visited their house one evening) by assessing my daughter that she is getting our accent and grammar so I should speak to her in Urdu rather than English normally we speak to her in English at home, according to her I should let school do that job as I am ruining her accent really shaken my confidence am I that bad? As we do not want to give this vibe to our child being highly qualified we can not speak right English with right grammar or accent, Can you please advise as an expert what is best route I should take being a parent to receive that comment was really harsh I know kids learn with time will she adopt our grammar or accent? Will she be ashamed of our accent/ grammar? Thanks

Submitted by editor_Jo on Wed, 09/09/2020 - 08:07

In reply to by Irsa

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Hi Irsa,

Thank you for your post. I have consulted an expert in our team and here is a reply to your questions.

 

Thanks so much for sharing your interesting story and question. These are complex issues and difficult questions that I'm sure many parents can empathise with.

 

First of all, I wanted to congratulate you on what you yourself have achieved. Many people think that you can only be bilingual if you have grown up with two languages from birth. But contemporary language experts have a very different idea: you are bilingual if you use more than one language for particular purposes in your daily life. So, the fact that you use English to work in investment banking, to socialise, and to bring up your daughter, means you definitely qualify as bilingual. Furthermore, you are completely proficient in Urdu, making you a multi-competent language user, with different and additional skills to those of someone who only speaks English. So, I really think you should feel proud of what you've achieved and what you can offer your daughter.

 

The decision of which language(s) to speak with your child is a personal and complex one. I'm sure you're weighing up a lot of different factors like her relationship with you, her connection to her Pakistani family and culture, all the cognitive and social advantages of being bilingual, and, at the same time, how you can support her to get her English as good as possible. From what I understand, she's receiving schooling in English and she's growing up in the UK, as well as getting English at home from her parents. In this sense, English is currently her 'first' or dominant language. In these conditions, she is highly likely have a UK accent and grammar, although there a many different UK English accents, and even more English accents from all over the world. Few people speak like the Queen (in fact, even the Queen's accent has been shown to have changed over time!), and no accent is something to be ashamed of.

 

I would encourage you and your partner to think about how important it is for you that your daughter speaks Urdu. You might decide you feel more comfortable continuing to speak English at home, or one or both of you could speak Urdu with your daughter to help her learn Urdu and develop bilingually. English is the community language and the language of your daughter's education. So, you might want to balance this by offering her Urdu at home, and therefore ensuring she learns both languages. Whatever you decide, you are giving your daughter something positive. She is very lucky to have a parent who is such an excellent role model for language competence.

 

Good luck and very best wishes


Jo G
LearnEnglish Kids Team

English courses for children aged 6-17

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