Herbert Puchta "Teaching Very Young Learners - What's Hot and What Not"

The first plenary of #emf5 was devoted to something I have a very basic competence in - teaching young learners. I have to admit, I did start my teaching career with the interview for the pre-school English courses. Luckily, they didn't take me. Luckily because I later found out that it is almost a completely different area of esl, and I was more comfortable teaching teenagers and adults. However, I found Herbert Puchta's quite interesting and realised I was a true beliver in many myths that surround teaching YL and which the speaker tried to debunk.
The speaker started with the arguments against teaching YL. He claimed that there was no solid evidence for a Critical Period hypothesis. Moreover, small children do learn much slower than, say, adolescents. On the other hand, there is no scientific backing-up for the theory that learning second language will influence child's 1st language acquisition. Puchta himself admitted that he is in no way against teaching English to YL pointing out some distinct advantages of starting out early such as increased motivation, enhanced cognitive development and improved attitude to English in the future.

That said, he continued with what he thought should be necessarily at the core of teaching YL.

1. Quantity. Lessons should be regular and happen more often than, say, once a week.
2. Embedded interaction. Learning has to happen in the context and create classroom culture of participation. An old input-output system will just not work on its won with YL
3. Embodied interaction as in use of one's body. Quite often children can't express themselves in words even in their first language, so watching the body language of your students can be a valuable resource  in the classroom.
4.  Cognition. Hebert didn't put it in a separate category, but I felt a lot of words were said about it. The idea was traced back to Lev Vygotsky's theory of "shared cognition" that places a great importance of parent-child interaction. Thinking and speech in this situation go together and develop simultaneously. Another side of it is gently pushing learners beyond what they know and can do because learners will always have a need to express more than they can.
5. Stories.  Puchta reminded us that stories help children make sense of  and experience the world around them. Child's thinking is ultimately story thinking and their understanding of the world is  mythic understanding. So stories are a quick way into that reality. The speaker warned us against "fake-stories" often published in textbooks and reminded us 4 properties of a real story

• it has to have beginning-middle-end structure
• it has to involve some magic (like talking animals)
• something unexpected should happen
• there should be strong emotional contrasts

Herbert concluded with the hope that there are three competences teachers have to pass on their learners

communicative, linguistic and personal.