Learning through experience and activity
Children have a strong instinct from birth to explore their environment. We can see this in the way young children like to touch and play with things e g. pressing buttons, switches. Some researchers suggest that this exploration through activity provides the basis for cognitive development. In language learning, this means that children are more likely to pick up language e.g. vocabulary, grammatical patterns, functions, from participating in activities which require their use than being taught them formally and deliberately For example, if children follow instructions to make mask and then use the mask to take part in role play or drama, we can say that the activities they have been involved in support their understanding of the language used and, though they may not be consciously aware that they have been listening to language or using it in the role play they may gradually start to acquire some of the language they are exposed to incidentally. In this respect, children are different from adults who can learn both analytically and also experientially. Most children tend to rely more heavily on experiential forms of learning up to around 9 or so.