A. Young learners often learn slowly and forget quickly. - The popular belief that somehow young learners find it much easier to learn than adults is attractive, but not supported by evidence from classroom contexts where children learn English as a foreign language in their own country for a few lessons a week. From the rather limited evidence available, research tends to show that older learners (from 13 or so and up) may have advantages in terms of remembering grammar and vocabulary (Aitchison, 2003; Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle, 1978), possibly due to having an advantage over younger learners in terms of their learning skills, B. Young learners may not always have well-developed literacy skills to support their learning of English. - Many children at the younger age of the 6–12 spectrum may not be able to read and write in their own language, or may be starting to read and write L1, sometimes in a different script, in parallel with learning to read and write in English. It is often the case, therefore, that children up to the age of about 9 may not be able to use an ability to read or write to support their learning in a foreign language. Cameron (2001:108) refers to this phenomenon as a ‘literacy skills lag’. This means that, in many young learner classrooms, talk is the main medium of input, as children may not yet have the skills to decode meaning from written text., C. Young learners are still developing cognitively, linguistically, socially, emotionally and physically. - Young learners aged 6–12 are developing their thinking skills and their first language systems, discovering rules for interacting with others, understanding their own reactions to others and to events, and learning to develop hand–eye co-ordination and other motor skills. Smith (1995) summarises this by describing young learners as ‘products in process’. The breadth, volume and speed of this early development also means that there are significant differences in the abilities, interests and characteristics of children within the 6–12 age range. There can, for example, be significant learner variables between say, children aged 8–9, and children aged 10–11 (Cephe and Teflik, 2001)., D. Young learners often have no obvious reason for learning English. - Many adults choose to learn English for specific job-related or personal purposes. Learners at secondary school are often motivated to learn English in order to pass an exam, get a job, or go to university. Young learners, by contrast, are generally made to attend language classes (even those in private language classes), and may have no obvious reasons for learning English. They generally do not need, for example, to order a meal in English, give directions, or discuss the weather (Clark, 1990), all typical focuses of an adult early language learning class. However, the lack of a clear reason for learning English may not worry the young learner, who will very often bring goodwill, energy and curiosity to learning.,

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