APPROPIATE LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION

Many important researchers have studied how human beings learn. Piaget has established some stages that explain what human beings are able to accomplish at specific points in their life; therefore, his theory is a way to know and understand our process of learning from a psychological point of view. Thus the learner’s age is an important characteristic which the teacher should take into account to prepare a class in order to provide appropriate language instruction.

Teachers have a huge responsibility, a teacher's first moral obligation is to provide excellent instruction and a teacher with a high level of moral professionalism has a deep obligation to help students learn. We as teachers can help our students by knowing their needs and becoming aware if the importance of the learner’s age. this will help us to create a program, a syllabus or a lesson plan according to the age; in order to maximize students’ potential. In this blog you are going to find some articles about Piaget’s theory used to understand intellectual children development, skills related to the ages, and how a teacher can prepare a class taking into account the learner's age.

Age-Related Factors in Second Language Acquisition

Substantial interest surrounds the question of how age affects second language acquisition. This is a particularly intriguing question for educators who must develop appropriate curricula and instructional strategies for refugee and immigrant children of different ages who are entering our schools. Unfortunately, too little is known about language acquisition in general to allow us to say definitively that X or Y makes acquisition easy at one age or difficult at another. However, the convergence of several lines of psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic theory and research suggest possible explanations for age-related influences on language acquisition that language educators should take into account. The purpose of this discussion is to focus on several variables that have been shown to be age-sensitive in the process of second language acquisition. A word of caution is necessary at the outset: generalizations about the relationship of age and language acquisition are treacherous for two obvious reasons. First, people of the same age do not share all the same characteristics. We can speak of a typical six-year-old or an average fifteen-year-old, but we have to keep in mind that a norm or an ideal may be as much fiction as fact in the real world. Among people of the same age, differences in attitudes, aptitudes, knowledge, and skills make sweeping generalizations about learners elusive. Second, there is no uniform pattern of development that everyone follows. Even if we could say that everyone eventually achieves certain characteristics, it is clear that there is no common route to be followed. Knowledge and skill are acquired by each of us according to a highly individual map.

Class Preparation

Throughout Piaget's theory, teachers must become aware about why the learner’s age is so important in the acquisition of the second language, as Charles says in his article Age-Related Factors in Second Language Acquisition, although is difficult to define in which age are easier or harder learn a second language he argues that there are psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic theories and researches which propose possible explanations for age-related influences on language acquisition that language educators should take into account.(Charles, 1981.)

Teachers must think on the stages proposed by Piaget in order to choose better their topics, methods and activities. Therefore if a teacher has a one to two year students group, she or he should create an appropriate program for them, for example: this group is in the sensorimotor stage for that reason according to Piaget at this stage the child can internalize symbols by imitating and repeating; thus, it is the opportunity to teach vocabulary related to topics such as the family, the house etc; moreover at this stage Piaget (1954/1981) postulated that children learn best when afforded opportunities to interact with their environments; so, it is important to promote the interaction with their parents, we as teachers can help, the more children interact with their parents while completing school assignments, the more likely they are to experience success. (Battle, 2003).

ACCORDING TO EACH STAGE.

In the preoperational stage Piaget established some processes in which the child goes through, at this stage the teacher should stimulate the imagination one of the process stipulated by Piaget is Symbolic functioning in this process the child uses words or pictures to represent something which is not physically present; as a result, it is suitable the use of flashcards to create association among words, pictures and pronunciation.

Another process explained by Piaget is called egocentrism; this process indicates an inclination of a child to only think from her or his own point of view and also, the inability of a child to take the point of view of others, subsequently at this stage, it would be unsuitable to think as a teacher in an activity in which the children have to share ideas and conclude objectively about something.

Piaget also state other processes denominated Seriation and another called classification which occurs in the preoperational stage as well; these involve the ability to arrange objects in an order according to size, shape, or any other characteristic, moreover; the ability to name and identify sets of objects according to their characteristics, including the idea that one set of objects can include another. For this reason the teacher should take into account that this is an appropriate stage to teach topics like shapes, colors, geometric figures, contrasts between measures, etc.

The Concrete operational stage is the third of four stages of cognitive development in Piaget's theory. This stage is characterized by the appropriate use of logic, and the teacher should become aware about some important processes which occur during this stage.

One of them is called Decentering and another is Reversibility, according to Piaget in these processes the child takes into account multiple aspects of a problem to solve it, moreover the child understands that numbers or objects can be changed, and then returned to their original state. It means that is suitable to introduce topics like color combination which generates other colors, or mathematics operations.

In addition to those processes Piaget points that at this stage takes place the elimination of Egocentrism, thus the children are ready to think critically and objectively taking into account other’s view points, finally she or he understand that not everyone has the same perspective of the situation. (Tudge, 1989).

The formal operational stage is the fourth and final of the stages of cognitive development of Piaget's theory. It is characterized by acquisition of the ability to think abstractly and draw conclusions from the information available. During this stage the young adult functions in a cognitively normal manner and therefore is able to understand such things as love, "shades of gray", and values. Lucidly, biological factors may be traced to this stage as it occurs during puberty and marking the entry to adulthood in Physiology, cognition, moral judgments (Kohlberg), Psychosexual development (Freud), and social development (Erikson). Finally at this stage the learner has had a complete process in which she or he has learnt enough vocabulary and some grammatical structures, and her or his mind is more capable to understand better grammatical structures and at the same time, she or he will be more interested on understand the syntactic and linguistic process that occur in the acquisition of the second language.

Skills related to the ages

Listening, writing, speaking and grammar are the four skills that a second language learner should develop and then improve.

In the process of the acquisition of a second language, teacher should become aware about the learner’s age which is one of the most important factors that determines the skills in which the teacher and the student should work on.

Charles says that it is difficult to determine at which age the acquisition of the second language is easy or not, moreover to make generalizations is erroneous because, even when two persons are the same age, they do not have the same characteristics; and also there is not a unique prototype in which all people develop (Charles, 1981), but he also believes that teacher should know that there is a cognitive development which can be an idea to understand when some skills are more sensitive than others and if they are not accurate at least it would be a tool which can be used.

There are some skills which are categorized as receptive: listening and reading and the others are called productive: speaking and writing.

Listening is understand what we hear, There are two kinds of listening situations in which we find ourselves, interactive and non interactive.

Interactive listening situations include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls, in which we are alternately listening and speaking, and in which we have a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from our conversation partner, on the other hand some non-interactive listening situations are listening to the radio, TV, films, lectures, or sermons. In such situations we usually don't have the opportunity to ask for clarification, slower speech or repetition, therefore we as teacher should understand in which age or in which stage -according to Piaget-we can promote activities like these, for example it would be suitable at concrete operation and also Formal operations.

Speaking skill is more than just pronouncing words, although it is believed that children are more sensitive to develop a better speaking it does not means that an young adult or adult can, the real fact is that children are more perceptive to imitate in a better way the foreign sounds, they can almost talk as a native speaker(Charles, 1981).

Reading skill can develop independently of listening and speaking skills, it can help build vocabulary that helps listening comprehension at the later stages; particularly, teachers have take into account the learners age to choose the readings, this is a skill that is develops gradually according to the age, not only because the child cannot read well but it involves the capacity to understand the reading and think critically about it as well.

Writing is the hardest skill even for native speakers of a language, since it involves not just a graphic representation of speech, but the development and presentation of thoughts in a structured way, therefore it demands to think critically in few words in the formal operations stage the learner would be more capable to develop and improve this skill satisfactorily.

Piaget’s Theory

Piaget’s theory used to understand intellectual children development.

First at all, we need to understand Piaget’s theory. Piaget focuses on the mental processes that occur, rather than on the actual measure of the intellect. He uses four developmental stages to define intelligence. These stages are:

1. Sensorimotor stage (birth - 2 years old)—Piaget said that in this stage the child explores the world with senses rather than through mental operations, she or he is building a set of concepts about reality and how it works. Piaget calls this the sensorimotor stage because the early manifestations of intelligence appear from sensory perceptions and motor activities.

2. Preoperational stage (ages 2-7)—Piaget found that at the end of the second year new psychological functioning occurs; Piaget points that although the child is not yet able to conceptualize abstractly and needs concrete physical situations she or he can distinguish between small and big, tall and short etc.

3. Concrete operations (ages 7-11)—Piaget affirms that at this stage the child can understand and conceptualize her or his physical experience by the appropriate use of logic for that reason he found that at this stage abstract problem solving is also possible.

4. Formal operations (beginning at ages 11-15 adulthood)—Piaget establishes that during this stage the young adult functions in a cognitively normal manner and therefore is able to understand such things as love, "shades of gray", and values; in addition to this, he says the young adult is also able to think abstractly; moreover, she or he has the ability to formulate hypotheses and systematically test them to arrive at an answer to a problem. (Piaget.)