This fully updated second edition provides a comprehensive and readable introduction to teaching young learners. It gives an accessible overview of the issues, including child development, L1 and L2 learning, L2 skills, vocabulary and grammar, learning to learn, materials design, and policy issues. Integrating theory and practice in an accessible way, it draws onup-to-date research and classroom practice that is internationally relevant. New for this edition: • Systematic incorporation of ideas related to technology across all chapters • Discussion of current trends in the field of teaching young learners, including CLIL, online learning, issues of assessment, 21st century skills, and ways of giving children more agency in their language learning • A new chapter on intercultural awareness for young learners • Updates to research and practical examples, and new tasks • An extended final chapter on classroom research, complete with innovative ideas for researching with children.

This comprehensive guide to research and debate centres around language learning in childhood, the age factor and the different contexts where language learning happens, including home and school contexts. The scope is wide, capturing examples of studies with different age groups, different methodological approaches and different languages.

An overview of the issues surrounding the teaching of young learners combines up-to-date research with principles of classroom practice to discuss skills, vocabulary, grammar, adapting and designing materials, planning and assessment, and policy decisions.

Adopting a learner-centred approach that places an emphasis on hands-on child SL methodology, this book illustrates the practices used to teach young second language learners in different classroom contexts: (1) English-as-an-Additional-Language-or-Dialect (EAL/D) – both intensive EAL/D and EAL/D in the mainstream (2) Language-Other-Than-English (LOTE) (3) Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL), (4) Indigenous (5) Foreign-Language (FL). It will be particularly useful to undergraduate teachers to build upon the literacy unit they undertake in the first years of their course to explore factors that constitute an effective child SL classroom and, in practical terms, how to develop such a classroom. The pedagogical strategies for teaching young language learners in the six chapters are firmly guided by research-based findings, enabling not only pre-service teachers but also experienced teachers to make informed choices of how to effectively facilitate the development of the target language, empowering them to assume an active and effective role of classroom practitioners.

Systematic incorporation of ideas related to technology across all chapters. Discussion of current trends in the field of teaching young learners, including CLIL, online learning, issues of assessment, 21st century skills, and ways of giving children more agency in their language learning.

Helps teachers to assess children's progress in English, in a way that is appropriate for young learners.

This book will develop readers' understanding of children are being taught a foreign language.