Languages and Children: Chapter 5

Here in the first page, one of my questions that I asked in class during the KWL is answered determinedly. In the past, introducing the written word to second language learners was seen as a bad practice and a way to confuse the young mind. Now, methods scholars suggest that we should introduce the written word as soon as possible. Like teaching literacy to anyone, there are a few necessities: fostering help with missing schemas, introducing reading and writing as tools for communication (not just filling out a worksheet), building a word wall, teaching the basics of directionality and the physical processes of reading a book, surrounding the students with meaningful written words, and peer teaching (or shared reading). This chapter provides a few great starter activities for the early language learning child.