Teaching English to young learners: patterns of history

  • 1500

    Spread of printing. Educational shift away from Latin.

  • 1582

    Richard Mulcaster. Champion of the Vernacular English claimed English as the language of freedom and liberty

  • First German mother tongue school at Koethen in Saxing opened by Wolfgang Ratke

  • Great didactic was published: the central role of mother tongue in the child's explanation

  • Joshua Poole: Young children would learn Latin grammar better by learning English grammar first

  • Teachers used dialogue forms for teaching English (Direct method)

  • John Locke: young learners are better at pronouncing foreign languages

  • John Locke elaborated an essay called "Some thoughts concerning education" containing modern system education to replace the horrors of grammar school

  • Joseph Priestley: The propriety of introducing the English grammar into English schools cannot be disputed

  • Lowth's short introduction to English grammar is published and stated the influential prescriptive grammar

  • John Miller published ‘The Tutor or A New English and Bengalee Work’ considered as the first non-European ELT book.

  • State elementary school did not follow prep- school that taught Latin and French

  • Berlitz school was created. They used Direct method for teaching

  • The board of education set up Stanley Leathes ideals

  • Period: to

    Foreign languages were reserved for bright adolescents

  • Large-scaled shifts of population resulted in substantial linguistic minorities

  • Psychologist William Penfield stated pre-adolescents children are well-suited to the acquisition of foreign languages

  • The absence of foreign languages of state education sector was questioned due to the teaching of French to primary school children

  • Leeds: Native-speaking teachers publicised experiment to teach French to primary shool children