English in Early Childhood: Language Learning and Development
All-Time Top 100- Provider FutureLearn
- Cost Free Online Course (Audit)
- Session Finished
- Language English
- Certificate $59 Certificate Available
- Effort 2 hours a week
- Duration 6 weeks long
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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.
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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%
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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!!
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.
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
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…
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…
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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