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Online Course

English in Early Childhood: Language Learning and Development

All-Time Top 100

British Council via FutureLearn

(171)
2.3k
Found in ESL, Humanities
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  • Provider FutureLearn
  • Cost Free Online Course (Audit)
  • Session Finished
  • Language English
  • Certificate $59 Certificate Available
  • Effort 2 hours a week
  • Duration 6 weeks long
  • Learn more about MOOCs

Taken this course? Share your experience with other students. Write review

Overview

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How do very young children best learn English as an additional language while they’re still learning their mother tongue? How and why do children learn best through play? What can parents and practitioners do to enable children to get the most out of a learning experience?

This course for parents and practitioners will explore how young children learn English and investigate many more aspects of early childhood learning and development.

British Council educators will share their insights and experiences, so that you can learn how to best talk to young children; how to create the best environment for them to learn English as an additional language; and how to monitor their progress.

Through articles, videos and live events you will hear from early childhood experts and parents, and see for yourself how young children learn inside the early years classroom. At every stage, you will be offered tips, advice and downloadable resources.

You will join discussions and have the opportunity to interact live with our experienced educators.

This course will be of interest to you if you are: a parent of young children who wishes to support their child learning an additional language; an English teacher or an early childhood practitioner; or someone who is interested in the area of child development and language acquisition.

If English is not your first language please be reassured that this course is suitable for those who have learnt English to around intermediate level (approximately B1 on the CEFR).

The principles of learning an additional language during early childhood apply to all languages, so if you are a parent, teacher or practitioner interested in teaching languages other than English, you will find plenty of relevant methods in the course.

Taught by

Sheona Gilmour

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Reviews for FutureLearn's English in Early Childhood: Language Learning and Development Based on 171 reviews

  • 5 stars 85%
  • 4 stars 12%
  • 3 stars 2%
  • 2 star 0%
  • 1 star 1%

Did you take this course? Share your experience with other students.

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Anonymous
Anonymous completed this course.
1. The curriculum is designed very well, apt, short, appropriate.

2. The sections are well planned.

3. The views from teachers, experts helped to understand the concept so we'll.

4. The quiz helped so much which also was so non judgemental, void of labelling and not competitive!

5. The downloads are so so important notes. Thank you for all the notes!

6. The comments section is what I will miss as I made new friends and followed few!

7. Overall, I have found a purpose to why English should be at our home!

Thank you!!
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
Anonymous
Anonymous completed this course.
Teaching English as an additional or foreign language is challenging. The course "English in Early Childhood: Language Learning and Development" lasts for 6 week with focus on : 1- development stages 2- playing in childhood 3- interaction 4- learning in meaningful context 5- safety and trust 6- observation and assessment. Three main theories in learning " interaction" , " exposure", and "ZPD" are discussed and their relationship with learning in childhood is elaborated. I think this is an absolutely essential course for whom want to enter teaching additional language to children in early ages. I liked the course, the ideas, the videos, and the whole material prepared here. I appreciate all the staff's support. Thank you very much , Good job.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
Anonymous
Anonymous is taking this course right now.
Excellent course for both parents , carers & professionals. Everything is in bite sized chunks, so you can complete one small piece when you have time, or get a large amount done. There are no strict time limits to complete, the course will be open for a little longer than the time announced. You could complete it all in a week if you wanted to.

Futurelearn is excellent with a wide variety of courses to suit all interests. There are some interesting autism courses which are run from time to time which are excellent and may also be of interest.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
Anonymous
Anonymous completed this course.
I was hesitant to join the course in the beginning,as I thought this to be as same as other online courses.But after 1 week I couldn't resist myself to continue with the course. Being an early year teacher for almost 25 years,I thought I knew most of the things related to Early Years.But this course has really helped me to get new ideas,change my view points and enrich myself with great knowledge.Thank you so much for sharing and putting everything in the very best way.I would be surely recommending this course to my other early years teachers too.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
Anonymous
Anonymous completed this course.
I thoroughly enjoyed this course - thanks to the British Council for bringing up a course like this and the informative talks by various educators ..... I feel so confident, happy and proud to have learnt the importance of English in early childhood, the various methods and activities and use of better resources, which will help me understand and change the life of every child and make me a better practitioner.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
Mckyla F
Mckyla completed this course.
I had the idea of early childhood in my head but I've never been exposed to this kind of information. This course is a game changer for me and my students. They are going to eat English up! The questions and answers are very valuable.

I now have pointers and ideas I've never had before, thanks to this course my intelligence has widened. I've noted all your advice and guidelines and going to make the most of it
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Anonymous
Anonymous completed this course.
I have learnt very helpful tips which have been helpful in improving my interaction with children since I started the course. Through the course, my relationships with children have been changed positively and I have found out that every of a child's activities beats around experimenting and then learning which is a good thing to know for me.
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AA
Asdoost A
by Asdoost completed this course, spending 1 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be very easy.
For a long time I have been looking for a MOOC about Child language acquisition. I was glad to find this course, but it was disappointing. The course is more parental advise than a scientific course.
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Anonymous
Anonymous completed this course.
English in Early Childhood: Language Learning and Development is very interesting course to take in count if you wish to up-date and take a wide knowledge about teaching early childhood.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
Anonymous
Anonymous is taking this course right now.
I really like the course as it provides lots of materials and food for thought re the situations and approaches that tend to be taken for granted, like labelling a child "clever" and praising a child for being talented as well as cliches "well done, good job!" showing no real interest in what the child has achieved/ is working on.

The materials on growth research and failure of clever children and teenagers and the suggested strategy of working on a growth mindset was totally new for me. My perspective has changed a lot, for which I am very grateful!

I also really li…
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Anonymous
Anonymous is taking this course right now.
I praise my grandchildren saying,”you are clever. “ But I also say, ‘You can do it “. Borrowed from you can do it Cinderella. Now I must use clever sparingly and praise and stress the effort .

This course is brilliant . I have learnt a lot in this three weeks and I have also learnt to assess the nurseries that my grandchildren go to. One (A) is extremely good and seems to follow what was talked of in the course. The other (B) seems to be only a childminding place. Development is not advocated so much. The one who started this September in (A) is younger by 2 months and was-b…
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Anonymous
Anonymous is taking this course right now.
The Course on Teaching Young Learners hepls me, as an educator, to understand what we should do to contribute to young children's second language learning. I've got to know that interaction with children, that is joining in their play, asking simple questions, commenting, facilitates their development. I've also learnt that such interaction can boost their intrinsic motivation, but labelling,even positive, can disempower them. Children should know that they are in control of their actions.

I liked mini lectures of James Nottingham a lot and the experience of different teachers and parents, shared with us, was of great value for me. There are a lot different additionals materials we can download on the discussed problems.

To be frank, I hoped I'd find here also some the information about teaching the second language to 6-8 year-olds. But it is not the end of the course, so there might be something about the children of this age in other units
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Anonymous
Anonymous completed this course.
Thank you for this rare opportunity to be enrolled in a free course with 100% interest benefits in terms of very informative, useful knowledge and strategies in teaching English to young , diverse learners.

This course equipped and reinforced what we already know about teaching young children English. It presented to us step by step approaches teaching language to our learners from observation, assessment and planning and highlighted with the 'magic moment or wow moment which I like very much and this is something new also to me because I'm also new to early childhood education. My training is on secondary school but now I want how it feels to teach young children - the reason I took this course. This course ,I'm sure will empower and help teachers very much.It is like a cusomized curriculum for young learners and a guide to the teacher's journey to teach English to young learners.
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Anonymous
Anonymous completed this course.
I'm personally going to be taking a college course in September for early years child development and thought this course would helpful in preparation. I couldn't be happier that I took this course. I've learned so much about how children learn and how to encourage young children to continue to learn even if they don't realize it.

I was home schooled my whole life and love that during the course the teachers pointed out how assessment can't always measure where a child is. I personally loved hearing James Nottingham talk about assessment and how it can't measure a child's determination, courage, creativity and so on. I feel better equipped for my course this September and what I want my early students to remember and experience while they spend their time in my classroom.

Thank you so much for providing this course,

-Karlyne O.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
Melissa A
Melissa completed this course.
The course was very practical and relevant. I would recommend it to all kinds of teachers - teachers who are just starting to teach and teachers who have been teaching for a long time. Young teachers will have access to lots of great input on fundamental language teaching principles and more experienced teachers will have the opportunity to revisit their practice and think about why they do what they do in the classroom, or why some things they have been doing work, while other things don't. I also liked the way the course organizers made it possible for people to interact and participate in the lessons. Answering the educator's questions and reading the other participant's opinions helped me process all the teaching in a very natural way... the feeling of being part of this world size class was phenomenal !
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
SS
Samina S
by Samina completed this course.
The course has been really useful and it is relevant for both educators and parents. I found the sections on safe and enabling environment, observation, assessment very useful but at the same time, how do we look at learning beyond speaking, writing and reading to look at other aspects. It would be really good to also include empathy and team work/working together skills among children as I think these are very useful life skills which need to be built in early years . I say this because just yesterday, I came down with fever and 5 year old nephew brought water and medicine and said, take this, you will feel better!!

The other area of learning was not what we learnt from the course educators but from the participants of the course. There is huge resource of expertise and knowledge in this group.
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Anonymous
Anonymous is taking this course right now.
I am enjoying this course very much. The videos are interesting and bring out the important points of the discussion. It is also very helpful to review the largest views on education and hear the opinions of experts. It helps me review my own beliefs on education and re-think how I apply them. It also has been a help in how I coordinate with the parents of the children and gives me new materials to share with them. Both as a mother and educator I find the course engaging on both a mental and emotional level. Almost al parents are deeply concerned about how they can give their children the best life possible. It is one of the reasons I became a teacher. It is very nurturing to be involved in and share the discussions this course is about.
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Anonymous
Anonymous completed this course.
What a course!

I'm speechless with your work throughout this six week course. Getting to know that I'm on the right track, reassures my teaching life.

Thank you for the links, the videos.

I wish there were more weeks for us to go further.

I liked a lot how you girls made us observe the children around us. Too bad, it's during the winter vacation in Brazil. And some of the observation had to come from memories and report notes. But it was so wonderful that I decided to upgrade my course in order to get the certificate.

I'm thankful for your help.

I'll definitely keep in touch with you and I'll be taking a Cambridge CELT-P or TKT-YLE this semester to put it in practice the knowledge from this experience with you girls.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
Anonymous
Anonymous is taking this course right now.
The course is very educative. Learning from all these parents and educators have opened my eyes to a lot of things which will be implemented later. Since children learn fast, depending on each child, learning a English as a second language should not be difficult.

I commend the teachers in the English class on their patience with the kids. I think labelling is not a good thing but which is done in most parts of where I come from by parents and even teachers. It is rather unfortunate some of don't have these trainings.

I think this will go a long way to help me later in life in assessing who to employ as a preschool teacher when I establish a preschool and also to help me with the rest of my kids that will come.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
Anonymous
Anonymous is taking this course right now.
Prior to the course, I had some ideas on how to approach teaching very young learners, but I wanted to learn more about children; how they learn and what I can do to help them use the language naturally. Enrolling for the course has been the best decision I made. The course has provided me with insight to the importance of play, how children develop, the importance of communication with other teachers and parents and ways we can observe, assess and plan our lessons. It also provided me with several opportunities to reflect and apply some ideas / techniques. The course would benefit anyone who is a parent, a caregiver or interested in teaching young learners.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
Anonymous
Anonymous is taking this course right now.
I have found this course very enlightening as to how to teach and deal with children wether you are a teacher or not. I am really learning and enjoying doing it, there are so many topics. I just finished week 3 and so far it’s been amazing. I wish I had known all this when my kid was young.

There is one thing I would like you to clarify. On many instances we are told young children should not watch tv, phones, tablets, etc. But I would like to know if they can watch some videos with children’s songs for a few minutes once a week. I believe it helps with the vocabulary. What are your views on this particular issue?

Congratulations for all your work!
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