Supporting the Wellbeing of Young Children with EAL

Essential Ideas for Practice and Reflection

Liam A. Murphy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000588668
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Language and communication skills are a key foundation of child development. This accessible and engaging resource enables early years educators to support the wellbeing and development of children whose first language is not English.

Positioning language as a community entity, the book explores critical approaches to language development and, importantly, their practical application to planning, provision, professional development, and wellbeing. It provides context and evidence-based strategies to develop strong, child-centred practice in real-world settings, and offers an overview of how educators can work with families to ensure a consistent approach to early language development at home.

The book:

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• Supports the wellbeing of children for whom everyday communication in an English setting may be confusing and difficult

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• Provides strategies and techniques that recognise the unique wellbeing needs of children with EAL and can be implemented immediately throughout the EYFS curriculum and beyond

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• Focuses on engaging the whole community with a holistic approach to early language development and wellbeing

Drawing from first-hand experience and with practical examples and ideas woven throughout, this is an essential resource for all early years educators working with young children with EAL.

1 Understanding Critical Approaches to Language and Wellbeing

DOI: 10.4324/9781003190219-2

In this chapter, we will explore critical approaches to language development. We will explore how to think about language development in a broader capacity and how to engage with critical language theory in order to promote best practice in the early years environment.

Introduction

The importance of language is practically immeasurable. Language means different things to different people, and language represents different aspects of diverse cultures. Language can be fun, language can be misinterpreted, and language can be fiercely guarded by its speakers. Without language, our world as we know it wouldn’t exist, and yet each of us unknowingly uses upwards of 16,000 words per day (Mehl et al., 2007) without paying much attention to the value of our language. This aspect of our lives, however, does not apply to everybody.

Learning Example: Ài Love You!

There exist today 1.3 billion speakers of Chinese. To most of us, this is a foreign language that we do not speak, understand, or read. To the Chinese, this language is a fierce tool of identity, politics, upbringing, and family history.

When the Chinese express love in their traditional alphabet, they do it like this:

Love in traditional Chinese (pronounced Ài) is made up of a series of strokes, and typical of the traditional Chinese writing system, the character for love contains another character at its centre, the character for heart (心 – Xīn). Take a look: you can see this series of strokes right there in the middle! Now let’s look at the same word in simplified Chinese, the current frontrunner for China’s main system of characters:

See the difference? Cantonese people certainly do. The simplified character is missing its heart, and Cantonese speakers argue that without the heart there can be no love. Something so simple has sparked much debate, and this is the nature of language.

Please note, this is not a book written with the intention of teaching its readers Chinese, but it certainly is a book that aims to show its readers the sheer importance of language, the power language has over us, and the need for educators, teachers, and practitioners of the early years to understand the effect language has on our emotional and mental wellbeing.

Language development is an important indicator for mental wellbeing in young children yet strangely, or rather fortunately for many of us, we will never truly understand the difficulties that can arise when we are unable to communicate in our daily lives.

As we practitioners of the early years go on to explore the key elements that are essential for children to learn language, it is becoming increasingly important for us to consider the key theories that support how children learn language. I think of this as a back-to-basics approach because these theories are often things we learned because we had to, not because we took any real interest. But, after gaining some experience in the setting, looking back at these theories is a great reflective activity.

None of you reading this book are expected to become academic theorists; however, we should all have a recognisable understanding of the opposing forces in language theory before we attempt to put strategies into place in the setting. When a practitioner can think theoretically, they expand their ability to think practically.

Environmentalism

With that in mind, let’s think about our environment! More specifically, the potential the environment can have on a child’s language development.

In 1986, Gordon Wells conducted a longitudinal study of how language develops in the family environment using observations on the types of language used at home. When talking with children, he found that adults often use single words (mostly nouns) in an attempt to make language easier to understand. While use of single words didn’t show an effect on a child’s actual language ability, it did show implications on the timeline of language development in young children. Children living in environments with rich language use enjoyed almost ten times more exposure to words and sentences than children whose families focused on more simplistic language.

This study is one of many that would suggest that the environment in which we are raised plays key a role in our language development.

Pre-dating Wells (1986), was Skinner (1957), who famously worked on conditioning experiments with rats and discovered a simple formula for behaviour:

Stimulus = Response

Skinner saw rats respond to positive and negative reinforcement and he suggested that children learn languages in the same manner. A child is first exposed to a stimulus and the child is rewarded when they use language.

Learning Example

Two-year-old James is in the kitchen with his dad. He sees a pack of biscuits on the side and points to it, making a sound to indicate that he wants them. Dad sees this and says, ‘What is it? You want the…’

‘Bic bics’ says James.

Dad smiles and hands James a biscuit.

In this example, the biscuit is the stimulus and the reward is being handed something to eat. The response from James’s dad is what will lead James to repeat that particular behaviour and apply it to other situations. As a result of examples like this, Skinner suggests that the acquisition of language is an environmental experience. This implies that it is through interaction that language learning is enabled, and this is the foundation of Environmentalism.

Skinner (1957) also talked of the use of rewards for correct or accepted language. He suggests that it is the praise and acceptance of spoken language that reinforces use of the mother tongue.

Lev Vygotsky (1935), a pioneer in the Environmentalism movement, would further these ideas of language acquisition with the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

Put simply, the ZPD is the difference in learning a child can do on their own, and the learning they can achieve with support. As a supporter of Environmentalism, Vygotsky believed that adults and more knowledgeable peers provide support to existing knowledge and language ability.

So the debate here is this: is language a product of the environment or do children have an innate ability to learn language? What do you think?

There are those within the field of language development such as Jean Piaget (1923) and Noam Chomsky (1959) who rejected the ideas of Environmentalism, suggesting its approach was oversimplified. Piaget placed emphasis on children learning for themselves through problem solving, rather than exclusively through social interaction. Chomsky believed that complex language could not be learned through simple reinforcement.

TIME TO REFLECT:

• What are your thoughts on Environmentalism?
• Do you think that the environment is more important than social interactions?
• Do you think children are capable of learning unaided by adults or do you believe like many in the Environmentalism movement that it is the environment that encourages a child to learn language?

Have a think about certain things in the environment that could encourage child to learn language. Next, think of how you could create or expand your environment to further learning opportunities for children.

Innatism

If you aren’t a fan of Environmentalism, you might just be a supporter of Innatism!

Humans are born with a set of innate abilities and traits. Two of the first to develop are fears; we fear loud noises and we fear falling. This is genetic, and we have no control over it. A Montessori teacher might say we have other innate needs such as to discover, to be independent, and to make order. These innate parts of ourselves are out of our control.

Chomsky (1964) would apply this notion to language. He describes our ability to learn and use language as a built-in device that forms part of the human brain from birth. This built-in device is appropriately named the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). The LAD does not apply to any particular language, but rather is a process in the brain that allows children to learn the universal elements of any language...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• An Introduction from the Author
• 1 Understanding Critical Approaches to Language and Wellbeing
• 2 Connecting to the Holistic Approach
• 3 Exploring the Prime Areas in EAL
• 4 Exploring the Specific Areas in EAL
• 5 Overcoming Challenges for EAL Children
• 6 Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
• 7 Engaging EAL Families
• 8 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index