Teaching English to Young Learners

Posted on Sep 8, 2024 in Language

Pyramid of Learning

1. Project point, computer, videos (DVD), language laboratory.

2. Cassette recorder, OHP, photocopier.

3. Whiteboard and books

4. Paper and pen

5. Blackboard

6. Nothing

C.1 REALIA

What is Realia?

Real objects

Give Examples of Realia:

Hair ribbon, a coin, a button, a ring, a paper clip, an elastic band, an old photo frame, a key and a padlock, a soft ball.

What are the Limitations of Realia?

The limitations are the size and quantity of the objects themselves and the students’ tolerance.

C.2 PICTURES

Examples of How We Can Use Pictures:

  • Drills
  • Games
  • Understanding
  • Ornamentation
  • Prediction
  • Discussion

Where Can Teachers Get Pictures?

  1. Make wall pictures from magazines and stick them on card.
  2. We can draw them.
  3. We can buy reproductions, photographs, and posters.
  4. We can find pictures on the internet, photocopy them, and print them off.

What Three Qualities Should Pictures Possess?

  1. They need to be appropriate not only for the purpose at hand but also for the ages of the students they are being used for.
  2. Pictures should be visible.
  3. Pictures should be durable.

COURSEBOOK

What are the Benefits of Using a Coursebook?

  1. Good coursebooks are carefully prepared to offer a coherent syllabus, satisfactory language control, and motivating texts.
  2. They are often attractively presented.
  3. They provide teachers with material that they can have confidence in.
  4. They come with detailed teacher’s guides.
  5. Students like coursebooks.
  6. Coursebooks also provide material that students can look back at for revision.

What are the Restrictions of Coursebooks?

  1. They impose learning styles and content on classes and teachers alike.
  2. Units and lessons often follow an unrelenting format.
  3. Coursebooks can sometimes be bland or culturally inappropriate.

Why is a Dogme Language Teaching (DLT) Approach Attractive?

  1. Because it can offer students a dynamic and varied program.
  2. It will greatly enhance their motivation.
  3. It allows teachers to respond on a lesson-by-lesson basis to what is happening in the class.
  4. It means an exciting and creative involvement with texts and tasks.

What do Teachers Need for a Bookless Language Teaching (BLT) Course to be Successful?

  1. Teachers need access to a wide range of materials.
  2. They will have to make a variety of home-grown materials.
  3. They will also need the confidence to know when and what to choose.

What is the Most Important Aspect of Coursebook Use?

The most important aspect of coursebook use is for teachers to try to engage students with the content they are going to be dealing with.

What Does This Imply?

This means arousing the students’ interest in a topic and making sure that they know exactly what we want them to do.

How Can Teachers Enhance the Coursebook?

  1. We might add something to it. For example, a role-play after a reading text.
  2. We might rewrite an exercise we do not especially like.
  3. Replace one activity or text with something else.
  4. We could reorder the activities within a lesson, or even reorder lessons.
  5. We may reduce a lesson by cutting out an exercise or an activity.

SELECTING AN ENGLISH COURSEBOOK

What Should Teachers Take into Consideration When Choosing a Coursebook?

  1. They have to select a coursebook that suits the needs of their students, their unique characteristics, and their preferences.
  2. The coursebook has to be one that the teachers believe will motivate them.
  3. The teacher must choose a coursebook that will help the students increase their language performance.

What Pedagogical Factors are Involved When Choosing a Coursebook?

  1. Suitability for the age group.
  2. Cultural appropriateness.
  3. Methodology.
  4. Level quality.
  5. Number and type of exercises.
  6. Skills.
  7. Teacher’s book.
  8. Variety.
  9. Pace.

How Can Teachers Adapt a Coursebook?

  • Personalizing it.
  • Individualizing it:
    1. Modification of the content of the coursebook.
    2. Addition or deletion of the content.
    3. Reorganization of the content.
    4. Dealing with omissions.
    5. Modification and alteration of language tasks and activities.

USING FLASHCARDS WITH YOUNG LEARNERS

Why Use Flashcards?

  1. Appeal to visual learners.
  2. Make a real impact on visual learners.
  3. Flashcards can be used in conjunction with word cards.
  4. They are a great way to present, practice, and recycle vocabulary.
  5. They can be taken home for students to play with, with parents and siblings.

What Categories Can Flashcards be Divided Into?

  1. Memory tester.
  2. Invisible flashcards.
  3. Identification activities.
  4. Total Physical Response (TPR) activities.

LISTENING AND SPEAKING

What Happens When Children are Learning to Listen?

Children are actively engaged in constructing meaning and making sense of what they hear.

What do They Use as Well as Language to Understand?

  • Their expectations about the intentions of the speaker.
  • Predictions about what they will listen to.
  • The speaker’s use of voice, mime, and gesture.
  • The reason and purpose for which they are listening.
  • Other features in the immediate environment.

Through What Means Can Understanding be Guided?

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What are the Three Stages in a Listening Activity?

  • Before listening.
  • While listening.
  • After listening.

LEARNING TO SPEAK

What Must be Considered When Learning to Speak a Second Language (L2)?

Their age and level of social, cognitive, and emotional development.

What Areas Can Speaking Skills be Divided Into? What Does Each Refer To?

  • Spoken interaction: Refers to the ability to ask and answer questions and handle exchanges with others.
  • Spoken production: Refers to the ability to produce language.

Should Children be Corrected?

Rather than explicitly correcting language mistakes, it is best to respond to children’s meaning and what they are trying to communicate. As you do this, you can remodel or recast what they say.

What is the Best Strategy to Use When Getting Children to Speak?

The best strategy is usually to provide lots of opportunities for speaking activities in a very secure and non-threatening way.

FRAMEWORKS FOR SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

What is Important When Teaching Children to Speak?

  • It is important to provide frameworks for speaking activities.
  • It is also important to ensure that speaking activities are designed to foster active listening, turn-taking, and respect for other people’s opinions.
  • Speaking activities should be personalized and offer choice.
  • It is beneficial to establish frameworks where children are motivated to speak and feel that they have something to say.

To be Successful in Speaking, What Should Teachers Do?

  • Set clear goals and establish what the outcome of the activity will be.
  • Prepare for, model, rehearse, and demonstrate the language children will need.
  • Introduce explicit rules to ensure that the activity is done in English, rather than in their first language (L1).

PRONUNCIATION

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REFLECTION TIME

What Aspects Should Teachers Reflect on to Evaluate Lessons?

  • Motivation
  • Purpose
  • Preparation
  • Learning support
  • Personalization
  • Timing

LEARNING TO READ

What are the Advantages of Learning to Read in English?

  1. Children develop positive attitudes.
  2. Strong motivation and a sense of achievement.
  3. Reading also reinforces and extends what children learn orally.
  4. Reading in English provides an opportunity to build on and transfer skills from and to L1.

WHEN TO START READING

When Should Children Start to Read?

  1. It depends on the context, such as the children’s age.
  2. The children’s literacy skills in L1.
  3. How much English they already know.

What is the Usual Approach to Introducing Reading?

The usual approach is that reading and writing in English are introduced gradually after basic literacy has been established in L1.

What Does Reading Competence Involve?

It involves constructing meaning and making sense of written text.

How Can We Create a Print-Rich Environment?

  1. Labeling classroom furniture.
  2. Creating a weather and date chart.
  3. Making a birthday calendar.
  4. Making a chart of key instructions.
  5. Include a display of pictures of famous people.
  6. Story or coursebook characters with speech bubbles for key classroom language.
  7. A notice board where you and the children can write messages.

What Should Reading Activities be Like?

  1. They should involve decoding written language.
  2. Skimming a text for global understanding.
  3. Scanning a text for specific information.
  4. Inferring implicit meaning in a text.
  5. Understanding the writer’s intention.

How Can We Develop Reading for Pleasure?

  1. Through the use of class readers.
  2. A school or class library.
  3. Encouraging children to write book reviews of what they read.

INITIAL WRITING

What Should Pupils Develop in the Initial Stages of Writing?

  1. Children need to develop hand-eye coordination.
  2. Motor skills.
  3. Effort and concentration.

What is the Emphasis in Initial Writing?

The emphasis is to support and consolidate oral work, reinforcing the understanding and spelling of familiar vocabulary items and sentence patterns.

How Should Writing Activities be Set Up?

We should create motivating and meaningful contexts, a reason and purpose for writing, and ensure that the children have a sense of audience and who they are writing for.

STORYTELLING AND DRAMA

What Can Children Develop Through Stories?

Children develop an understanding of themselves and the world around them.

What are Storytelling and Drama Above All?

Above all, they are shared, communal classroom events.

How are Discovery and Meaning Supported?

Through things such as visuals, mime, gesture, voice, and characterization. Children also develop learning strategies and thinking skills, such as predicting, hypothesizing, guessing, and inferring meaning.

How Can We Use Stories in Class?

  • To supplement the topic or structure-based coursebook.
  • To base the whole language program and syllabus on a selection of stories.

What is Important When Selecting Stories?

The most important thing is that the story you choose is suitable for the children it is intended for. The content should be interesting, appealing, and memorable and, if the story is illustrated, that the visuals are clear and attractive and will support children’s understanding.