In discussions about learning English in preschool, whether led by parents or professionals, certain contentious questions arise. One of them concerns the initial vocabulary, or as laypeople often say – the “basic things” that a preschool-aged child could or should learn. However, answering the question “what are the basic things of a language, including English?” is not so simple.

It becomes clear to anyone upon their first encounter with a group of children that working with kids is never simple and is always multi-layered. Even if you have never worked pedagogically, you can imagine yourself or someone else with five, ten, or fifteen (of course, very different) children whom you are supposed to introduce to a certain content in English that day. How this process unfolds, and what vocabulary would be appropriate, depends on many factors, including the type of preschool English program you have chosen – academic or holistic (comprehensive). These two approaches differ, among other things, in adults’ views of childhood and their role in raising and educating children. Over more than twenty years of experience teaching English to preschoolers, I have chosen the holistic rather than the academic approach. But what exactly does this distinction mean when it comes to vocabulary selection in English?

The academic approach assumes a strictly prescribed program with predetermined outcomes and precisely defined content. This is a typical model of learning a foreign language – through predefined themes and words, most often relating to colors, numbers, body parts, family members, animals… Therefore, in this respect, there is essentially no difference between many textbooks intended for preschool children. English is introduced precisely through this so-called “basic” vocabulary. What could be problematic about this kind of choice? Many things! First, nowadays practitioners often get groups in which children have varying levels of English knowledge. Earlier exposure to English through media and the fact that parents enroll their children in classes at younger ages have led to some children already knowing how to name the items from the above-mentioned list. But not all children in the group do! Every parent naturally thinks their own child is most important. However, practitioners must care about ALL CHILDREN in the group. That means that when choosing vocabulary, content and activities should be designed to be motivating and interesting both for a child who already knows five colors, fifteen animals, or eight body parts in English, and for a friend who does not know them. Is that possible? I believe it is and that it’s definitely worth the extra effort. Especially since you have incredibly inspiring “helpers” – the children themselves, who communicate (verbally and non-verbally) what interests them, what they like, and what they don’t like.

This leads us to another problem with the academic approach in vocabulary selection: it is based on the assumption that ADULTS already know what will definitely interest CHILDREN. Reality is, however, quite different — and fortunately, much nicer! Just like in Duško Radović’s poem “Children Like,” children like (strange things, sweet things, funny words like chimney sweeps, rice pudding, ducklings…).

Children are interested in many things outside the “basic things” list, which practitioners cannot know in advance. They can learn about these while spending time with children, talking, observing, listening… Whether they take that knowledge into account when designing English activities depends again on the adults’ approach. If you opt for the academic approach, that will not be very important because the vocabulary and expressions you use are pre-chosen as basic or useful English words. What is problematic here? For example, preschool children do not learn in lessons. Such lesson-based English instruction will be introduced in the first grade of elementary school, where, by the way, they will learn the same words and phrases. If we limit children’s English learning thematically from the start, we also limit their chance to explore and learn many other things beyond mastering the “basic” vocabulary – for example, how mashed potatoes (MASHED POTATO) are made from the song DO YOU LOVE ME?, what the bobbin is for in the song WIND THE BOBBIN UP, what else is found in the tailor’s box helping us make a sun curtain from the song YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE, how it feels to climb a ladder and shout WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD, how popcorn (POPCORN) is made from corn (CORN) that pops (POP!), and how it can stick to a drawing with a pot (POT), what a sunflower (SUNFLOWER) looks like and what a buttercup (BUTTERCUP) is, which is the name of NIGHTBEAR in the eponymous story, to which instrument family the banjo (BANJO) belongs… When you participate in this with children, you quickly realize they prefer to learn and do what MAKES SENSE TO THEM and that often it is much more fun for them to respond to POSE! or TWIRL! than to commands from the “basic things” arsenal like Sit down! Stand up! or Point to a boy! Why is that? Probably because the former expects only a correct task performance, while the latter gives them freedom and imagination to create unusual poses and spins with no right or wrong answer – all are perfect! Also, probably because preschoolers still live in a magical world where EVERYTHING can be a source of fun and knowledge, including English. So why do we limit them to “basic vocabulary” at their very first encounter? Mostly because we analogize with the mother tongue, thinking: the initial English vocabulary should be limited to basic things because 1) the first words in the mother tongue belong to that list, 2) in preschool, a child’s vocabulary mostly contains words related to their immediate environment; 3) vocabulary should be frequent and usable in real communicative situations.

However, this thinking misses the fact that preschoolers have already acquired many other words in their mother tongue (the list is very long!), that these words are not only about their immediate environment (think about heart, dream, dinosaur, world, Africa, noise…), and that real communication situations for them are not limited to questions/answers like What color is the dog? The dog is yellow. For them, it is perfectly “real” to say PUT THE CORN/A PINCH OF SALT IN THE POT or I COME FROM ALABAMA, to name a few examples we used in the above activities. In a child’s “reality,” there are no limits or basic things! The question is only whether you will adapt the English program to the child’s reality or try to make children adapt to the program’s reality. I chose the first option. But that does not mean that as an English teacher I should only be an entertainer making the classes fun (which I must be), but I must also care about what children learn in English.

I have no doubt that even through English vocabulary that is not perceived as “basic,” children can become familiar with core elements of spoken language, such as intonation (e.g., the melody line of a sentence) or pronunciation (e.g., sounds that don’t exist in the mother tongue, more open or closed vowels, diphthongs). Thus, by listening to and pronouncing the above words, children mastered characteristic English sounds, even though these words were not dog, cat, one, two, or red. At the same time, they were introduced to certain language structures (e.g., question formation (Do you..?), imperative mood, use of English prepositions and possessive adjectives (in the pot, with my banjo on my knee), the definite article the, idioms (a pinch of salt; you broke my heart), adjective-noun phrases (wonderful world, dark starry night)… And they learned some new words in their mother tongue (kalem/ljutić/Alabama), talked about what stars do in their free time and why the world is beautiful, learned that it’s okay to say you like or don’t like someone’s work (I like/I don’t like), but not to tell that person their work is ugly because taste is a very personal thing.

If all of this is equally important to you, then the learning/teaching process you participate in with children will not focus only on developing competencies in a foreign language through a pre-chosen vocabulary but will expand boundaries. That process will be unpredictable but all the more inspiring – for children and adults alike.

Vanja Jovanović, English Teacher
Trešnjober Preschool