Teaching Young Second Language Learners

The book edited by Rhonda Oliver and Bich Nguyen is a very welcome and timely contribution to our understanding of the challenges involved in teaching young second language learners in different classroom contexts. Besides a thorough description of each of those contexts, the reader will find focus questions and case studies that will help him/her navigate through the complexities of the different settings. The contributors provide pedagogical strategies and approaches to teach young learners, which will surely be of use to practitioners worldwide. I highly recommend this book.

María del Pilar García Mayo, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

The book provides an ideal introduction to the wider field of language education for readers, especially in Australian settings, who have an interest in teaching language to young learners and who need to be prepared to adapt to the diverse, and often unpredictable, circumstances in which this may take place. It brings together eleven authors who enable an unusually comprehensive treatment to be given to the many different, but related, ways in which language education of young people may take place.

Ian Malcolm, Emeritus Professor, School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University

Rhonda Oliver & Bich Nguyen have produced a wonderful treasure trove of work on teaching young child second language learners, with highly readable explanations relating theory to practice, bejewelled by illuminating personal stories. Importantly, this impressive collection of work from experts in each area represents a truly wide range of English language teaching contexts involving young learners. A thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking book.

Dr Jenefer Philp, Senior Lecturer, Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University

Teachers and teacher trainees will find this book to be useful and engaging. A variety of crucial information about young English language learners is provided along with clear explanations and examples. Especially valuable are the focus questions, activities, and case studies which are included in each chapter. These help readers contextualize the information and better understand possible applications. The overall topic coverage is excellent – addressing different contexts of learning (second language, foreign language, second dialects, etc.) the classroom teachers face. The highly readable chapters build understanding of the unique characteristics of different types of learners as well as their commonalities. Current and prospective teachers who want to know more about language learning will find the information to be revealing and relevant.

Rita Silver, Associate Professor, English Language & Literature, National Institute of Education, Singapore

This is a fascinating volume for teachers. It offers a timely focus on young learners and their learning of additional languages, a focus which is all too necessary but infrequent. In doing so it captures, in a single volume, a range of program contexts – intensive EAL/P learning for migrant or refugee learners, EAL/D learning in mainstream classroom, EAL/D learning of Aboriginal learners, EFL learning and the learning of world languages, which again is all too infrequent. In each of these contexts the author/s foreground and systematically explain the key considerations that pertain in recognising the language and cultural knowledge that learners bring to their learning and in advancing the goal of developing their multilingual repertoires. And with all this it offers a rich set of illustrative case studies and tasks, carefully woven together that invite interaction, discussion and reflection. A rich combination of research, theory and practice.

Angela Scarino, Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics, University of South Australia

Overall, the book meets its aim of providing theoretical frameworks and pedagogical approaches for guiding educators who are committed to better serving the needs of second language learners. More significantly, the authors remind us that language(s) learning is the key to achieve culturally inclusive and socially constrictive multilingual repertoires.

Grace Yue Qi, Language Teaching for Young Learners