It is well known the fact that the 5th and the 6th forms are extremely important in children’s intellectual, physical, emotional and social development. They pass from one stage to another in their life. They come from primary school where they had only one teacher and go to the secondary school where they have to adapt themselves to new conditions and where almost everything is new for them: the teachers, the subjects, etc. They acquire skills considered to be necessary by the community they live in.

      Opal Dunn (1977) states that “Young children, if they are normal, want to learn”. Pluckrose quoted by Dunn also emphasizes that; “At no other time in life does the human being display such enthusiasm for learning, for living, for finding out. Life long attitudes appear to be formed early. If teachers can manage to capture children’s enthusiasm and keep it by presenting well-planned lessons, right for their needs and development level, the children they teach make progress and find that they are good at English”.

        The above-quoted statements seem to be true because from the experience of teaching English, many theorists and practitioners have concluded that it is this first stage of learning English that foundations for what may be life-long interest in English language and culture can be laid.

        From my own little experience I may underline the fact that children come to English lessons with expectations about what they are going to do and achieve. Two of the most important reasons for pupils liking English appear to be the teacher and teaching methods. This suggests that one’s role, as a teacher is very important in selecting appropriate learning materials, planning interesting learning activities and in creating a positive learning environment. However, parental and peer influences are also important and need to be considered in trying to develop attitudes. Parental influences may be more important in younger children, while peer influences may become more important as children approach their teens.

        The research of Jayne Moon shows that there do seem to be differences in attitudes to English between age groups. Younger children tend to be more enthusiastic, while older children often become less interested, embarrassed by having to learn a language or even because they do not want to seem foolish in front of their friends.

      But, attitudes do not remain fixed and can be affected either positively or negatively by influences on pupils from outside school, for example their parents’ views or more often their friend’s views. They can be affected by influences from inside the school, for example how their teacher views English and what he \\\\she does to stimulate their interest. Attitudes can also be influenced by the learning process itself and by its outcomes. So if pupils enjoy their English classes and are successful, this may in turn develop positive attitudes and increase motivation. If both the teacher and his\\\\ her pupils have positive attitudes to learning English, this will help to create the kind of learning environment in which language learning will flourish.

        Who our students are. To be able to tell who actually our students  are, we are suggested, at least, to have been informed upon a child’s various stages of cognitive, emotional, physical, social and language development and to have acquired the ability to recognize when these changes occur. That is why I would try to mention some aspects concerning the developing child which are worth remembering any time we are to teach English to such students.

        The developing child. Piaget’s view that all children pass through the same stages of cognitive development but at different rates still provides a comprehensive outline for the study of a child’s intellectual development. It is generally accepted that experienced teachers and parents of young students are conscious of these different stages and know how to recognize development changes as they take place. As Dunn says, ‘’change can take place within a week or even a lesson’’, which means that teachers need to be flexible, adjusting lesson plans where is necessary to cope with new development. In some cases there seem to be periods of concentrated and sometimes rapid development followed by periods of little advance.

       Concluding these general remarks, I would like to quote what Jayne Moon showed after, examine teacher’s beliefs about how children learn foreign language. The main conclusions are: 

          Children learn a foreign language…

“…in a natural way, the same way they learn their native language”.

“…through being motivated. It depends on the teacher’s style. If the teacher motivates them they would learn fast or quicker”.

“…by listening and repeating”.

“…by imitating the teacher. They want to please the teacher. They feel embarrassed when they make mistakes”.

“…by doing and interacting with each other in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance, through a variety of interesting and fun activities for which they see the purpose”.

“…through translating sentences into their own language”.

        The term “development” refers to the process by which a child, an organism grows and changes through its life-span. In humans the most dramatic development changes occur in prenatal development, infancy and childhood, as the newborn develops into a young adult capable of becoming a parent himself or herself. From its origins, much of developmental psychology has thus been concerned with child psychology, and with the chance from conception and infancy through to adolescence.

        It is important to realize that a child’s ability to use his first language, in our case Romanian, is an important factor in the process of learning a foreign language. His ability to use his mother tongue will reflect on his ability to acquire English or any other foreign language. When the child’s ability of using Romanian language is not sufficiently developed, the teacher should not expect, on his behalf, performances in learning English.

        The relative speed with which children acquire the complex system of language is not yet fully understood. It may be that children are in some way programmed to learn language but psychologists also emphasize the role of dialogue between child and significant others in the achievement of meaning.

        Chomsky made the radical proposal that the principles underlying language are not learnt but are innate. He rejected as inadequate the learning theories advanced by the behaviorists because they could not account for the creativity of humans using language. Language cannot be learnt by simply reinforcement or imitation, Chomsky argued, because we can speak new sentences. They have never been spoken by the speaker before or heard by the listener. Yet, the speaker can utter the sentence and the listener understands it. How can this be explained?

      Chomsky’s answer to this question is that language learner that depends on innate structures, allow children to recognize and use the complex grammatical rules of a language.

       What is crucial, according to Chomsky, is that we are all born with what has been called a language acquisition device (LAD). All languages have rules which enable the language user to generate new utterances which they have never heard or spoken before, he argues that since all language share key rules, the underlying structures must be built into human brain as the LAD. The LAD is programmed to recognize the universal rules that underlie the particular language that a child hears.

        Chomsky also pointed out that language is universal. Children in all known cultures learn to speak, even a foreign language, unless they have some disability. According to Chomsky children who are exposed to a language learn to speak that language.

      The analysis of children’s utterances in terms of deep structure, surface, and the transformational rules related by Brown (1973), Slobin (1973), McNeill (1970), has greatly enriched our understanding of early language development. Children’s language does seem to develop in a systematic way. Children do seem to progress through similar stages in the acquisition of a foreign language. However, many contemporary psychologists question the notion of an inborn LAD, which operates most efficiently during a critical period between birth and puberty.