The psychodynamic view of children focused on the affective life of the young child. Childhood fears and behaviors took on new meaning as applied to the child’s unconscious. A child-centered learning environment is necessary for this period. The teacher’s role was less controlling.
From six to eight years of age, children are beginning to become competent with some of the difficult social and emotional skills mentioned above. They are generally better able to understand the perspective of others, and concurrently are much more interested in their peers at this time. As teachers see children develop these abilities, they should begin to design lessons that involve increasing amounts of pair and small group work.
A Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) for language learning was first formally proposed in the late 1960’s and has been hotly debated among second language acquisition researchers ever since. But, we can summarize that it appropriate to learn a second language at about six years old.
Children are full of energy and tend to be interested in tasks with interesting activities but not text-based tasks, and it’s obviously that almost everything is the best time for children of 6 or 7 years old to learn a second language. And Total Physical Response Method is a method focus on the physical actions and sensation. So that TPR method seems to be useful in the early childhood period. In the early childhood period, the main learning objectives for them are some simple words and let them be interested in English. So this paper mainly focuses on the vocabulary teaching of six or seven years old.
2.1.3 Physical development
The rate of brain metabolism starts to decline around the age of nine (Chugani, Phelps, and Mazziotta, 1987). Coordination improves with each year as lateralization of the brain and myelinization of nerve cells near completion by the age of six. Between the ages of six and nine, physical development progresses relatively steadily with infrequent growth spurts. During these years, the brain continues to function more and more efficiently. Lateralization further improves with maturation, and this quickens the brain’s processing of information.
The perceptual abilities of children—sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing—are generally well developed during the preschool period. By about the age of six children’s ability to coordinate their eyes with their hands and bodies are generally well developed. Children’s sense of hearing is well developed by preschool age.
Most children are able to perform basic gross motor sills, such as running and jumping, balancing, and hopping by the age of six. Between the ages of six and nine, children’s growth and greater coordination of their bodies in space contribute to their greater ability to control movements. The improved physical coordination, together with advances in cognitive and social skills, allows children to participate in games with rules and to cooperate as a team. By the age of five of six, children are usually able to engage in fine motor activities more easily and for longer periods of time. Overall, girls during this age span continue to develop fine motor skills ahead of boys, just as boys develop better gross motor skills due to their inherently greater body strength. Further refinement of fine motor skills continues between the ages of six and nine.
2.2 Total Physical Response Method
2.2.1 Definition
Young children start their foreign language learning in early childhood period is very appropriate. The popular belief that Total Physical Response (TPR) method is an appropriate teaching method, which is built around the coordination of speech and action, in other words it is to teach language through activity. Using Total Physical Response Method in Early Childhood Foreign Language Teaching Environments aims to discuss the positive sides of using TPR（Total Physical Response） in foreign language classrooms for young learners and introduce some sample activities. It suggests that the TPR method is appropriate in early childhood foreign language education. Total Physical Response is a kind of language teaching method, which attempts to teach language through teacher’s commands and students’ physical actions at the same time. Total physical response (TPR) developed by (Asher, 1966) is mostly used in conventional education settings. Furthermore, it is obviously that TPR is an useful method because many TPR related researches have shown positive effects on students’ learning performance, learning attitudes, confidence and motivation (Asher and Price, 1967; Kunihira and Asher, 1966; Wolfe and Jones, 2008; Wong, 1983). 全身反应法在早期儿童英语词汇教学中的运用(3):http://www.youerw.com/guanli/lunwen_50183.html