Teaching Languages to Young Learners: Learning language through tasks and activities
Teaching Languages to Young Learners: Learning language through tasks and activities
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向幼儿教授语言：通过任务和活动学习语言
DOI：
10.1017/cbo9780511733109.003
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发表时间：
2001
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
L. Cameron
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
L. Cameron
作为学习环境的任务 在本章中，我建立了一个从学习角度分析任务的框架，该框架考虑了年轻学习者的社会和认知发展。课堂任务和活动被视为外语技能增长的“环境”或“生态系统”（van Geert 1995）。 “任务”的概念需要稍微调整一下当前“基于任务”的语言教学方法中的使用方式，并将被赋予（后）维果茨基的倾向。本章的出发点是儿童作为（精神上）积极的学习者，他们会尝试为呈现给他们的活动找到意义和目的。年轻的学习者努力理解老师要求他们做的事情，并根据自己对成年人的目的和期望的理解来完成任务。对刚开始上学的幼儿的研究表明，家庭和学校的语言使用和活动之间往往存在很大差异，而且孩子们如何快速地了解对他们的期望以及如何适应新的互动模式（例如 Tizard 和 Hughes 1984）。我们可以预测，孩子们会将这些能力带到他们的语言课程中，而这种寻找意义和目的的冲动可以成为教师利用的非常有用的语言学习工具。不幸的是，即使是最有积极性的孩子也可能无法理解要求他们参加语言课程的一些活动；活动类型和新语言的结合效果会让一切显得过于神秘。
The task as an environment for learning In this chapter I set up a framework for analysing tasks from a learning perspective that takes account of young learners' social and cognitive development. Classroom tasks and activities are seen as the ‘environment’ or ‘ecosystem’ (van Geert 1995) in which the growth of skills in the foreign language takes place. The idea of ‘task’ will need to be adapted slightly from the way it is used in current ‘task-based’ approaches to language teaching, and will be given a (post-)Vygotskyan slant. Our starting point in this chapter is children as (mentally) active learners, who will try to find a meaning and purpose for activities that are presented to them. Young learners work hard to make sense of what teachers ask them to do, and come to tasks with their own understandings of the purposes and expectations of adults. Studies of young children starting school have shown how much difference there often is between language use and activities at home and at school, but also how quickly children work out what is expected of them and how to fit into the new patterns of interaction (e.g. Tizard and Hughes 1984). We can predict that children will bring these abilities to their language lessons, and that this urge to find meaning and purpose can be a very helpful language learning tool for teachers to exploit. Unfortunately, even the most motivated child can have problems making sense of some of the activities in which they are asked to participate in their language lessons; the combined effect of the activity-type and new language can render everything just too mysterious.