3 learning phases of CP/CK students

Phase I: Observation and imitation
1. Silent stage (which may be combined with emotional shock). The child is taking in the new situation and listening to the language to begin to make sense of what goes on around him/her.
2. Child will imitate what other children do in the class. In a sense, s/he is pretending that s/he understands.
3. A very outgoing child may use a lot of body gestures, or actually grab other kids in order to make him/herself understood. This may be misinterpreted as physical aggression by other children or by the teacher.

Phase II: Single word and phrase use
1. Child begins to use words or phrases that are important for his/her survival in the classroom. Example:
"Stop it!" "I’m next!" "Me too!" "that’s mine!."
2. Child begins to use the language but is still not sure of what constitutes a separate word in English:
Example:
"I like it" which s/he hears over and over is used as if it were two words:
"I like it play ball."
"I like it little trucks."
Eventually, the "it" part of the phrase is released and the child will say:
"I like little trucks."

Phase III: Initial understanding of grammatical rules
1. Early on in his/her use of English, the child may leave out plurals or past tense markers. This doesn’t mean that the child does not understand the concept of "more than one" or "past events." S/he may be using these forms quite comfortably in his/her first language.

One of the rules in the acquisition of a second language is: "Concentrate on big things first. Leave the details for later." If you can grasp the basic meaning of what your student is saying then ignore the grammatical errors.

2. Child’s comprehension exceeds his/her ability to produce language.
Often we place more emphasis on what the child is producing than what he or she is comprehending. The child may use the appropriate content words, but not in the appropriate form. For example, a child may be observing an experiment with ice in a freezer and say: "water frozen."

3. Child’s language may use grammatical forms that are literal translations from his/her first language.
A child for whom Spanish is the first language and who is used to the fact that in his/her language most objects have a gender assigned to them, may say:
"Where is my pencil? I put him there."

4. Child tries to make the most of the vocabulary s/he has learned. For example: "My sleeves are big." instead of "long." Here, the child is generalizing the meaning of "big" to include anything that goes beyond a particular dimension.

Shannon,

As you know Herbert Blah Blah Blah (Putchta?) has some amazing techniques for drilling language, and I feel that I use them very successfully. They are a great addition to our PPP methodology in CP/CK classes. Any chance you could post some links in here for his amazing videos? I bet others would find them useful as well!

j.