Teaching English to Children: Practical Tips and Techniques

Posted on Feb 22, 2025 in Early Childhood Education

Unit 1: Teaching Young Learners

1.1 First Language – Second Language

Knowing how children learn their first language can help us teach them a second language.

Babies:

  • Hear voices from the time they are born.
  • Listen to a lot of sounds.
  • Play with sounds and practice making sounds.

Young Children:

  • Only acquire the language they hear around them.
  • Need to hear a lot of English.
  • Listen to you and try to make sense of what you say.

Teaching Tips: Helping Children Learn a New Language

The teacher should:

  • Use English in class as the main language for communication.
  • Use gestures, actions, and pictures to help children understand.
  • Recast in English what children say to you in their mother tongue.
  • Answer children in English as much as possible.
  • Talk a lot in English (for example, about pictures or things children can see, what you want your pupils to do next).

Remember: The more the children hear, the more they will learn. Encourage them by responding positively.

1.2 Starting Your Lessons in English

Greetings and Forms of Address

  • Good morning, children. Good afternoon, everybody.

Checking Attendance

  • Let’s call the roll. Let’s take the register. Who is missing? Is everybody here?

Teaching Tips for Class Teachers

  • Do something different so that everyone knows it’s time for English (sing a special song).
  • Wear something special during the lesson (a badge, a hat).
  • Stand in a different place or arrange the room differently.
  • Put up a picture or get out toys that children associate with English.

Teaching Tips for Specialist Teachers

  • Plan something familiar in English at the beginning of the lessons to make the change of teacher easier.
  • Prepare a routine that the children like (sing a song or sing a rhyme).

1.3 Organizing Your Classroom

For organizing your class, the teacher can give some instructions, for example: “Close the door, please”; “Open your book”; “Close the window.”

For ending the lesson, the teacher can say: “Okay, that’s all for now”; “Okay, it’s break-time.”

Teaching Tips: Using English for Class Organization

The teacher can:

  • Use songs and rhymes when changing from one activity to another.
  • Encourage your pupils to use English for routine classroom requests by praising any effort they make.
  • Use wall charts or posters to help children remember what you are doing in the English class.

1.4 Very Young Learners (VYLs) and Young Learners (YLs)

Teaching Tips

The teacher for very young learners should:

  • Introduce English slowly with enjoyable activities.
  • Support what you say with gestures, actions, movements, and facial expressions.
  • Help the children feel secure by repeating familiar activities (songs and rhymes).
  • Repeat in English what children say to you in their mother tongue.
  • Use a puppet to talk to in English. Tell the children the puppet can only speak English so they have to speak in English to the puppet. If a child speaks in his/her mother tongue to the puppet, you can recast and speak to the puppet.
  • Use drawings and photos.
  • Tell lots of stories using pictures for support.

The teacher for young learners should:

  • Adapt the approaches you use with VYLs, and in addition:
  • Explain in their mother tongue on the first day why you are using English during the English lesson.
  • Talk about your own personal experiences (what you like/dislike). This is like telling stories.

And above all, have fun!