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And Foreign language learning during childhood mentions that “Early childhood is the best time for language acquisition. Ease of learning a foreign language diminishes with age. Between birth and adolescence the brain is hard-wired to acquire language naturally. As child approaches puberty, the nature of language learning and storage changes, becoming less flexible. Many experts believe that learning the language before the age of ten years allow children to speak correct and fluent as an indigenous person. Therefore, whatever the earlier children become familiar with foreign language, he has better chance to speak proficiency.” Meanwhile, Children are full of energy and tend to be interested in tasks with interesting activities but not text-based tasks, so that TPR method seems to be useful in the early childhood period.
Total physical response method (TPR) is a language teaching method that built around the coordination of speech and action. It attempts to teach language through physical activity.
Since the early childhood language learning is very important, and it consist of many aspects, such as vocabulary, grammar, listening, speaking and so on. I’d like to make my topic more specific, so I mainly discuss about the vocabulary, which is the basic knowledge of human beings’ language learning.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Early Childhood
2.1.1 Definition
Early childhood is the best time for language acquisition. Ease of learning a foreign language diminishes with age. Between birth and adolescence the brain is hard-wired to acquire language naturally. As child approaches puberty, the nature of language learning and storage changes, becoming less flexible. Many experts believe that learning the language before the age of ten years allow children to speak correct and fluent as an indigenous person. Therefore, whatever the earlier children become familiar with foreign language, he has better chance to speak proficiency.
According to French-Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980), children at different ages understand the world in fundamentally different ways. The preoperational period, roughly between the ages of two and seven, is the stage when children become proficient at using symbols, such as words, pictures, and gestures, to represent and understand concrete forms in reality. According to Piaget, children in this stage may not understand the concepts of object permanence or of the conservation of quantities such as number, mass, volume, and area. Children in this stage also have a limited concentration, or ability to focus on more than one aspect of an object. They also fail to understand the reversibility of operations.
Vygotsky pointed out the zone of proximal development (ZPD). It emphasized that within this zone, instruction must occur, which means children need teacher or adults’ help with their learning. He defined mental processes that children are born with as elementary mental functions, which include perception, attention, and memory; and functions that require mental tools, or mediators, as higher mental functions. Language and symbol systems are examples of mediators, and logical and abstract thinking are examples of higher mental functions. Since language is a kind of mediator and between the ages of two and seven, children’s logical and abstract thinking are not mature, it’s the best time to learn a language as a mediator for the children to be more logically of thinking.
2.1.2 Characteristics of the children
Friedrich Fröbel(1782– 1852) believed that young children should be given an environment rich in play objects, sensory experiences, and child‐directed play that would provide a "garden" for children. Fröbel’s kindergarten was grounded on the principles of free self-activity, creativity, social participation, and motor activities. The motor activities fostered learning by doing rather than by following instructions. Montessori believed that early childhood education functioned to assist the psychological development of children. She proved that focus first on the education of the senses, then focus on the education of the intellect.