When young learners enter school for the first time, they are about six years
old and are taught in their home language. ESL learners have to be taught in
English, a second language, and this causes language barriers.
Some ESL learners attend pre-school, others attend crèche’s, while some
attend neither. Pre-school spoken languages are mostly other languages
other than the home language. Only a few learners understand basic English
while others do not react to basic commands like “sit down” or “come here”.
The researcher is of opinion, that it is the teacher’s responsibility to gather
enough information about each learner in order to be able to diversify her
teaching strategy.
One of the problems in second language learning, is that not all the learners in
a classroom have the same degree of language proficiency and indeed
because of the following reasons.