I have compiled nine experiences about children's English enlightenment.

3 years old is an ideal starting point.

0~3 years old is the golden period of children's mother tongue development. By the age of 3, strangers can basically understand what they are saying.

Bilingual activities before the age of 3 require parents' English level to be higher, and children's mother tongue may develop slower than children of the same age.

Second, the goal of enlightenment

If we persist for eight or nine years, we will keep pace with children of the same age in the United States until we reach the age of primary school. What books do American children of the same age read and what books do we read?

The same level can pass the FCE exam;

Acquire knowledge through English;

Emotional goals: fun, happiness and enjoyment.

English enlightenment ended here, and English really became a stage for acquiring knowledge and happiness.

Third, English acquisition should be planned and step by step.

Children's language acquisition at home probably goes through the following four periods:

1, enlightenment stage: 3~5 years old (first hearing)

The most important thing in the enlightenment stage is listening, and we will talk about it after listening more, which is the "illiterate" stage.

Multiple contacts

Listen more.

Establish the relationship between English pronunciation and physical image, and establish English thinking.

Objective: Let children understand simple life words and instructions and expand their listening vocabulary.

Mode:

Interaction-everyday language

match

Original cartoon

flash memory card

Graded reading material

Play the tape, look at the picture and listen to the book.

Requirements: pay attention to understanding "meaning", establish the association of English sounds and images, and do not know words.

Interest first, a lot of investment.

Children's silence period is generally 6 months to 1 year, and children can have some simple output after hearing it to a certain extent.

Children are born with a strong ability to absorb language. No matter what language, as long as parents can provide a good language environment, let children contact and listen more, and establish the connection between sound and image, children will acquire a language at an amazing speed.

When I was studying in Peking University, Mr. Zhao, who taught me, shared some interesting stories about her bilingual parenting with her children.

Once again, the child took her out to play when she was very young, pointing to a fountain and saying it was a fountain. The child revisited the old place a year later and was able to speak for himself. Another time, a child came home from school and asked his mother curiously, "Why do I speak English?" Because children find that other children in the class have to learn English. This is the natural result of teacher Zhao's continuous and effective English input to children.

2. Literacy stage: 4-6 years old (natural spelling)

When children can understand most of the life expressions and simple English stories, and their vocabulary is around 3000, find some simple graded reading materials for children to read and master the most commonly used first batch of words.

While training reading, we should further strengthen our listening and speaking ability, continue to watch cartoons and picture books, start listening to audio books naked, ensure the input of listening, and practice oral English with children.

Objective: To be able to read simple picture books and graded reading materials, master a number of most commonly used words, and improve listening and speaking ability accordingly.

3. All-round development stage: 7-9 years old (reading, spelling, grammar, writing)

At this stage, the proportion of natural acquisition gradually increases.

Goal: All-round development of listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Key points: improve children's reading difficulty and reading volume, widely contact with all aspects of English, and read a lot of graded books, primary chapters and intermediate chapters. At the same time, adhere to the input of listening, the content of listening is mainly children's literature, and the content of listening is more difficult than reading.

4. Promotion stage: 10~ 12 years old (subject English, academic English)

Pay attention to both learning and acquisition.

Objective: To learn high-level reading and writing skills, develop into academic English, and exercise critical thinking, analytical induction and communication skills.

Focus: Improve reading quantity, reading speed and reading comprehension ability, expand reading depth and breadth, and get in touch with all aspects of English resources, including social science, popular science and literature. Gradually transfer English learning from simple language learning to using English as a tool.

Continue to listen more, listen to more complicated novels, popular science programs, speeches, history, geography and social knowledge, and watch more movies with certain connotations.

Fourthly, the roles and functions of parents at all stages.

1, in the enlightenment stage, parents are more involved, and the bigger they are, the more they let go.

Parents should be enthusiastic about English, interact with their children in English in life situations, and vividly read graded books to their children. If parents' English is not good, they should not be discouraged. Create a good listening environment for children by using cartoons, audio, teaching software and learning websites.

Parents learn to sing with their children, praise and encourage their children's progress, and pave the way for the first daily vocabulary of 1000.

The role of parents is to ignite children's interest in learning English and lead them into the door. Any activity in the enlightenment stage should focus on children's interests, mobilize children's various organs in all directions, and make children feel that English is very interesting.

2. In the literacy stage, parents should still be highly involved, accompany their children to read nature books aloud one by one, master spelling rules through practice, and convert listening vocabulary into reading vocabulary.

3. All-round development stage

Parents should be resource providers, extensively explore audio-visual and reading resources, and help children enter systematic learning.

Scholastic.com, one of the largest supplementary publishing houses in the United States, has grades, such as:

Of course, there is no need to strictly follow the level, and there can be some flexibility. If children are interested in books in a certain field, parents can find more similar books along their children's interest points. Tip: Series novels, ranging from a few to 40-50, are usually more and more difficult, such as Geronimo series. Parents can also find websites, difficult cartoons, audio books and so on.

4, improve the stage

In the senior stage of primary school, parents should help their children prepare for the exam. Help children get familiar with exams, continue higher-level teaching materials, and transition to subject English and academic English.

In short, what parents should do most is to know English teaching, provide children with input that meets the needs of each language learning stage, and ensure that all resources are in line with children's mental development and acceptance.

5. How to grind your ears in English?

Grinding ears is not only playing English audio all the time, just like we have never understood Arabic, which violates the principle of "understandable input" and is invalid. The ability to use a language is not taught, but naturally formed through contact with a large number of understandable inputs.

The "understandable language input" that language learners have to contact is slightly higher than the learners' existing language level. Namely: i+ 1 formula, where I stands for the current level of learners and 1 stands for language materials slightly higher than the current level of learners. Krashen believes that it is not enough to advocate input only. What learners need is "comprehensible input". Only when the learner gets a second language input slightly higher than his current language level, and he can concentrate on understanding the content rather than the form, can language learning produce results.

The ideal input should have the following characteristics:

Input is comprehensible: comprehensibility is a necessary condition for language acquisition, and incomprehensible input is meaningless to learners;

Input is interesting or relevant: if language materials are interesting and relevant to learners, learners will unconsciously acquire language;

Out of grammatical order: if the purpose is "acquisition" rather than "learning", teaching arranged according to grammatical procedures is unnecessary and undesirable;

Input must be sufficient: learning a new language requires continuous extensive reading and a lot of dialogue to be effective.

Sixth, the importance of listening.

In the theory of second language acquisition, listening comprehension is the key to reading comprehension and writing. Listening comprehension is the key to reading comprehension and writing. )

The pyramid diagram of ideological skills above shows that listening is the foundation of everything.

Most languages and characters in the world are "pronounced" with letter symbols. Although our Chinese characters are ideographic, our children learn Chinese characters only after they have mastered listening and speaking. Listening is still the basis of Chinese learning.

This is more important for phonetic English. "Sound" and "character" are closely related. If you master the decoding skills, you will be able to read and recognize "words".

It is important to have a "sound" first, and then a word spelling. Word spelling serves sound.

In addition, the essence of language ability is "communication of thinking voice". Whether you are talking, meditating or writing an article, when you are thinking, there is a voice in your brain that has been "mumbling" instead of spelling words in the movie, so we can say that thinking is sound.

The key to learning any language is to learn the sound of the language.

Seven, intensive reading and extensive reading

Intensive reading: short space, many new words, some grammar teaching and text teaching. Objective: To study.

Extensive reading: there are many contents and few new words, so students can read independently and realize fast reading. Goal: get

Parents can give intensive reading to teachers and accompany their children to extensive reading.

Studies have shown that learners can only remember a word when they see it 5~ 16 times in different contexts. According to the second language acquisition theory, the principles of extensive reading are free and voluntary reading and continuous silent reading. The material should be large, interesting and easy to understand, with no more than 5 new words per page, and there is no need to look it up in the dictionary. Learners choose their own materials and read at their own pace. After reading it, they don't ask questions, don't take exams, and don't feel pressured.

According to the principle of "acquisition" > "learning", the ratio of accuracy: extensive reading = 20%: 80% is the best.

Eight, follow-up reading

According to the second language acquisition theory, there is a silent period for children to learn English. In the early stage of English learning, it is not appropriate to ask children to follow suit. The most important thing in the early stage is to listen more, listen more and talk less. Usually, after listening for half a year, children begin to speak some English after some input. This "saying" is an interaction in actual communication, not a follow-up reading.

It is not in line with the law of language learning if children are allowed to keep learning and imitate pronunciation and intonation when they first come into contact with English, and concentrate on imitating pronunciation instead of understanding the whole language.

One advantage of children learning English compared with adults is that their mother tongue is not so powerful. Concepts can be directly input into the ""language area of the brain without their mother tongue, and can be called quickly in the future. After accumulating for a certain period of time, you can think in English, that is, you can establish English thinking.

When a child is young, don't teach English through Chinese, but give full play to his age advantage.

Nine, the golden advantage of learning English from an early age

If the child is divided into:

Children (preschool-third grade)

Older children (grades 4-6)

Learning English from infancy has four advantages over learning English after growing up as a "big boy":

1. In the language sensitive period, Chinese vocabulary is not rich, Chinese thinking is not so strong, and it is not easy to form the phenomenon of Chinese crutches. When parents expose their children to English, they can directly establish English thinking and programmed memory in their brains and help them become "bilinguals".

2. Children's mastery of pronunciation and intonation is more authentic than that of older children. 4~7 years old is the key period for learning phonetics. After the age of 8, it is a little worse, and it is basically impossible after puberty. Therefore, pronunciation is a childlike skill.

3, "no face and no skin", children have less concerns about learning a foreign language than older children. Children usually have a positive, open and happy attitude towards another language and are not afraid of being laughed at. When they are old, they will be in trouble.

4. The cognitive level is synchronized with the original work in age. Collection depends on a large number of high-quality inputs, and the original work is the main input. With these resources, children's language ability can reach the second language level close to their mother tongue.

Knowledge expansion:

Stepford. Krashen, a famous American language educator, 194 1 was born in Chicago, USA, and is now an honorary professor at the University of Southern California. He devoted his life to the study of second language acquisition. In addition to the "comprehensible language input theory", Krashen also put forward the theory of emotional filtering, monitoring, acquisition and barrel, revealing the important period of children's language learning! ?

Affective filtering theory

To achieve language acquisition, the human brain needs to be "open" to input, so that it can successfully reach the part of language acquisition-"language acquisition device".

There is an "emotional filter" in the brain, which controls language input like a valve and is completely manipulated by emotional factors. When in a relaxed and confident positive state of mind, comprehensible input can reach LAD smoothly, thus acquiring a new language.

The process of second language acquisition is influenced by many emotional factors, which have a filtering effect on language input, thus determining how much input learners accept.

Krashen believes that the emotional factors that affect language acquisition mainly include:

Motivation and attitude: whether the learning purpose is clear or not directly affects the learning effect. Clear purpose, great motivation and rapid progress; On the contrary, the impact is not great;

Personality factors: language learners who are confident, cheerful and feel good about themselves make rapid progress;

Emotional state: mainly refers to anxiety and relaxation: anxious people have high emotional barriers and less investment; On the other hand, it is easy to get more investment.

Therefore, in the process of children receiving knowledge, a pleasant and happy learning environment can really relax children's body and mind, so as to accept understandable knowledge input to the maximum extent and reduce the role of emotional filters caused by unpleasant emotional factors. This is the basic idea that Thomas Education knows how to make children achieve the strongest learning effect.

Monitoring theory

Language knowledge acquired through learning plays a role in monitoring language in the mind, and monitoring is a mechanism used by learners to edit their own language behavior. The monitoring process can occur before or after the utterance is produced, and it is not mandatory. It embodies the internal relations and fundamental differences between "language acquisition" and "language acquisition". ?

Acquisition theory

There are two independent ways to develop second language ability: language acquisition and language learning.

"Acquisition" is a subconscious process, and it is the result of natural communication that pays attention to meaning, just like the process of children's mother tongue acquisition. It requires learners to communicate meaningfully and naturally in the target language. In the process of communication, learners pay attention to the communication itself, not the language form.

Learning is a conscious process, so is formal education. Therefore, learners can acquire some conscious language-related knowledge.

Learning cannot be transformed into acquisition.

For example, a native English speaker can use the language correctly and fluently even if he doesn't know the grammar rules, while a language learner, despite his complete grammar knowledge, can hardly use it freely in practical communication. Therefore, for second language learning, natural language environment is more effective than conscious learning.

Barrel theory

The accumulation process of language learning needs to go through four stages:

The first stage: understanding is the premise of communication, and understanding of language precedes language output.

The second stage: there should be enough language information input.

The third stage: the silent period. After a period of language learning, children will enter a period of silent expression, which is when children absorb and understand the previous language information. At this stage, parents should be patient and understanding, don't force them to speak, and continue to increase investment.

The fourth stage: children output language in stages, and the expression is incomplete.

After the accumulation of these four stages, children's language expression, like a wooden bucket full of water, naturally overflows and enters an explosive period of language expression.