Educational discourse in a foreign language kindergarten classroom

Effective teaching of foreign languages to young learners at the kindergarten and early elementary school level has become one of the main educational objectives in the united Europe and other parts of the world. Yet, young learners' foreign language education still constitutes a real challenge and its shape has not been fully determined. This book, therefore, focuses on the educational discourse occurring in a foreign language, kindergarten classroom. The theoretical part illustrates discursive competence in the educational context, together with the psychological and linguistic development of the child. The subsequent empirical part presents the results of the research, which attempted to explore educational discourse between the teacher and Polish kindergarten learners, as well as to investigate the modifications it undergoes after the implementation of the puppet acting as a native speaker of English and as the teacher's assistant. The conclusions and implications derived from the study may be of interest to foreign language teachers, and to coursebook authors.

Autorentext

Anna Raulinajtys, PhD - gained her doctoral degree at the School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University. She has published articles on young learners' foreign language acquisition. Currently, she is teaching ELT methodology to English philology students and Technical English at Poznan University of Technology.