Rights in Early Years Settings and a Young Child's Right to Silence

Supporting young children in multi-lingual settings

“…While the shyer Sadira appeared to understand more and more English every week, she did not use this newly-acquired knowledge to converse with her peers. As Drury (2007) and Bligh (2011) highlight, learning through the so-called silent or non-verbal period like this is a common strategy amongst young new language learners. These two different approaches to learning a new language, however, began to impact on this group of girls' patterns of interaction.…”