First Language Acquisition Stages:

•   Cooing: (0-4 months) the baby starts producing vocal sounds.

•   Babbling: (6-8 months) the baby produces syllables such as ‘mama’ ‘dada’

• One –word stage: (12-18) babies start to understand and produce words such as ‘food’ ‘dog’ ‘toy’

• Two-word stage: (18-24 months) children produce two-word combinations such as ‘doggie big’ ‘mama go’

•  Telegraphic stage: children began producing full sentences.

It was highly useful for me to learn about these stages and to understand that the time varies according to each child. Although they may be going through a silent period, language is still being developed in their minds. My daughter almost omitted the two-word stage, I remember that she only said ‘mama milk’ and nothing else. But she became the ‘talking-queen’ during the telegraphic stage. So remember, language is not a formula, it is a very complex subconscious process going on in the child’s mind. 

Hi, again!

I want to share a class which I presented to my young students a week ago, and that it was quite engaging. The aim of it  was to prepare students to describe their own family members at the end of the unit.  In the same way, I prepared these activities taking into account that not all the student’s families are constituted in the same way (obvious but important!).

•        Students listened the song ‘we are family’ of the Ice Age 4. I asked them if they could recognised the song. And then we connected it to the characters.

•        I gave them a photocopy with some images and adjectives. We played a short game in which they had to say the name of each character as fast as possible. Then we wrote them on the board.
•                  Students had to underline the adjectives that better described each character.  
•             Then they read and justified their answers.          
•          I explained the use of ‘she is’ ‘he is’ and ‘they are.’ 
•       They chose adjectives and wrote full sentences.

Materials:

'We Are Family' Ace Age 4  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnXmGscq7OE

Worksheet https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PxMJrxeRelPSVlsR16Grpm2opzarpbUW78NzBqiPk8g/pub 

                                     

 

                        

Instructional sequence of a task

Step 1: Watch the trailer of the movie ‘The Circle’ and say what the theme is. Work in pairs.

Step 2: Watch an interview with the director and actors. Match each name to the corresponding opinion about the film.

Step 3: Read a short review about the movie. Underline words, sentences or phrases which express the writer's opinion

Step 4:  Watch the interview once more and pay attention to word stress, tone and body language.

Step 5: Write a review of the film and read it aloud. Work in groups.

Step 6: Each group choses a movie and makes a review of it. Finally students share their works with the rest of the class.

'The Circle' trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCOXARv6J9k

Pedagogical task

Task	Macrofunction	Microfunction	Grammar
Role play: You are trying to get your driver license. Follow your classmates instructions in order to get it.	Exchanging goods and services.	Following instructions.	Simple Present tenses, imperatives, negatives.

Task	Macrofunction	Microfunction	Grammar
After Reading the book ‘Can I Play Too’ play the role of the characters as you imagine them. Then compare the performance with the book’s pictures	Aesthetic	Peer interaction	Verb to be, simple present, modals.