Teaching language skills

When we talk about language skills, we are talking about speaking, listening, writing and reading. These four skills are connected to each other because we learn to speak because we first listened. When we start writing, we write the words as we hear them, but if we don't know how to read the letters, we can't write.

That skills can be classified depending on the direction of the information, if you are projecting it or recieving it. They also can be classified by oral, speak and listen, and written, write and read.

In this post I am going to explain how children learn L1 and how to introduce an L2.

Children start talking around the age of two, not always, but before that, they already start by saying some random words or sentences. When learning L1, it is so typical as babies to hear what people say and copy or repeat it. There is a period called "Silent Way", where children just listen and don't talk until suddenly a day they begin to speak. During that process children collect words and expressions that they will eventually use when start to speak. Not every children goes through that.

At the age of 3 or 4, children start recognizing some letters. It is so typical to start recognizing their names, sometimes, not because they know the letters, but because they have seen it writed down many times that they know that in there it says their name.

Now we ask ourselves, how we introduce L2 to children? There are many answers to that question, but I am going to suggest a few possibilites. You can start teaching an L2 by listenint to songs, watch videos in that language or easy as speaking to them in that language. At first it may be weird for them, but they will eventually get use to it and will be catching and learning words day by day.

During the learing of a second language, there are two steps that we all go through:

• Passive knowledge: when we can understand a language but can't project it
• Active knowledge: when we can understant a language and project it

When teaching an L2 we don't have to be in a rush, it is a long process, even longer than L1, because they don't hear it everyday and everywhere as they do with L1. That's why we have to be constant and patient.