Discover how very young children learn English as an additional language and how you can help them progress.
- Duration6 weeks
- Weekly study2 hours
- LearnFree
English in Early Childhood: Language Learning and Development
Why join the course?
Teaching English to children while they’re still learning their mother tongue is a challenging but rewarding prospect. In this online course, you’ll learn how and why 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 that will help you at teaching english as a foreign language to children.
You will join discussions and have the opportunity to interact live with our experienced educators.
What topics will you cover?
How children learn
- Early childhood development
- Children and language acquisition
Learning through play
- The importance of play
- Creating the right environment for play
- Developing language through play
How to talk to young children
- Encouraging emotional development
- Developing language through interactions
Learning: English and everything
- Developing the whole child
- Learning English in context
- Guiding the learning experience
Positive relationships and enabling environments
- Helping children feel safe and happy
- The importance of knowing the child well
Watching children learn
- Every child is unique
- Observation
- Assessment in the early years
- Planning: building on what children can do
When would you like to start?
Most FutureLearn courses run multiple times. Every run of a course has a set start date but you can join it and work through it after it starts. Find out more
Available now
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...
- Investigate how children learn and how they acquire language
- Discuss the importance of play and look at language development opportunities
- Reflect on ways to communicate effectively with young children
- Explore meaningful learning and developing language in context
- Demonstrate the connection between learning and a child’s well-being
- Identify ways to support and challenge children, and measure their progress
Who is the course for?
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.
What do people say about this course?
I want to thank the British Council for giving me the opportunity to learn about how children learn English in early childhood. I learned about how children learn, about learning through play, about how to talk to young children and about watching children learn. Now I feel more confident about child development and language learning thanks to this course and I will certainly apply what I learned here in the future because I hope to become an early childhood practitioner.
Anna Arrisico
I definitely feel more confident about child development and how it really works, teaching English to very young children. I'm now more confident about how to explain the learning process to parents. It's important to share this knowledge with the parents so they can support their children in the best way.
Teodora Kobor
Who will you learn with?
Sheona Gilmour
More than 20 years experience working with early years children and young learners in kindergartens, schools and teaching centres. I never stop learning, growing and changing.
Tracey Chapelton
I have been teaching languages for over 20 years. I love the creative aspects of teaching and learning, and I now mostly work in the areas of teacher development and materials writing.
Who developed the course?
British Council
The British Council is on the ground in six continents and over 100 countries connecting the best of UK culture with a global audience and providing high-quality English language courses.
Learning Time with Timmy - British Council
The British Council presents an innovative approach to learning English for 2-6 year olds in partnership with animators Aardman.
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