Bir xonlali songa bo'lish

Міністерство освіти і науки України

Дніпропетровський національний університет

ім. Олеся Гончара

Кафедра англійської філології

Н. А. Литовченко

НАВЧАННЯ АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ МОВИ

В ПОЧАТКОВІЙ ШКОЛІ

TEACHING ENGLISH IN PRIMARY SCHOOL

Дніпропетровськ

«Адверта»

2013

УДК 811.111 (07)

ББК 81.432.1 р

Л 64

Рекомендовано Вченою радою факультету української й іноземної філології та мистецтвознавства Дніпропетровського національного університету імені Олеся Гончара, протокол № 11, від 25.06.2013

Рецензенти:

канд. філол. наук, доц. А. Д. Горбань

канд. філол. наук, доц. О. І. Станкевич

Л 64

Литовченко Н. А. Навчання англійської мови в початковій школі / Н. А. Литовченко. – Д.: Адверта, 2013. – 32 с.

Посібник спрямований на навчання студентів вмінню працювати з учнями молодших класів, формування професійно-орієнтованих педагогічних навичок, закріплення матеріалу тощо. Він орієнтований систематизацію знань з курсу «Методика викладання основної іноземної мови (англійської)» та побудований відповідно до програми як додатковий матеріал до базового підручника А. І. Анісімової, Л. С. Кошової «Сучасні аспекти методики викладання англійської мови. Теорія і практика».

The textbook is aimed to develop students’ abilities to teach primary school children, to form their professional skills, to review the knowledge they possess. It provides material to systematize the knowledge of the course ‘Foreign Language Teaching’. It are compiled according to the syllabus as additional material to the textbook ‘Modern Aspects of English Language Teaching: Theory & Practice’ by A. Anisimova, L. Koshova.

Навчальне видання

Литовченко Наталія Анатоліївна

Навчання англійської мови

в початковій школі

Teaching English in Primary School

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Друк плоский. Ум. друк. арк. 2. Ум. фарбовід. 2. Обл.-вид. арк..

Тираж 50 пр. Зам. №

INTRODUCTION

As English has become the dominant language in the world, it has also become one of the components of tertiary, secondary, primary and even pre-school education in the EFL teaching contexts. It brings a demand for competent English language teachers to teach young language learners.

Ironically, today in Ukraine some English language teachers of young learners teaching in the primary education have never been a young foreign language learner themselves or never experienced being a student in a young learner English class. Besides, the majority of ones with an ELT diploma have not taken a special course, training or education on teaching English to young learners during their undergraduate education.

At the same time, age plays a crucial role in what we teach and how we teach it, since a young learner class is different from an adult and/or a teenager class in terms of the learners’ language learning needs, the language competences emphasized, and the cognitive skills addressed.

Teaching English for young learners, therefore, should be properly handled if it is to be successful. It needs highly skilled and dedicated teaching. Teachers of English for young learners need to have a sound understanding of how students think and operate, that is how young learners learn a language. The textbook “Teaching English in Primary School” will serve as the foundation for the implementation of teaching English to young learners. It is for the fourth-year students of the English department and English teachers.

These recommendations are expected to give insights to English teachers in general and teachers of English for young learners in particular, about the importance of taking into account the aspects related to the way young learners learn in designing their teaching learning process. It aims to provide them with the theoretical and practical aspects of Teaching English to Young Learners. More specifically, the textbook addresses issues related to theories of learning, the learning strategies of young children, teaching-learning activities, the classroom methods and techniques to be used when teaching English in primary school; the development of games, songs and visual materials and their use in teaching and assessment of young English learners.

1. GENERAL PROBLEMS OF TEACHING ENGLISH

TO YOUNG LEARNERS (TEYL)

1.1. Concepts of foreign language teaching to young learners

Young learners will learn best if the people involved in the teaching‑learning process facilitate the learning and take into account the way they learn into the teaching practices. Piaget suggested that children developed through specific stages, they are:

1. Sensori-Motor Stage (from 0–2 years) in which children seemed to learn through physical interaction with the world around them.

2. Pre-operational stage (from 2–7 years) when children need concrete situations to process ideas.

3. Concrete Operational Stage (from 7–11 years) in which children begin to conceptualize and do some abstract problem solving, though they still learn best by doing.

4. Formal Operational Stage (from 1–15) in which children are able to use abstract thinking.

Young learners can be included into those aged 7–11 years or within concrete operational stage, where they learn best from concrete things around them. Piaget believed that children went through the stages above and that they could only move onto the next stage when they had completed the stage before and were ready to do so.

Another expert, Vygotsky believed that language was central to the cognitive development of children, that it was instruction provided by an adult that helped children learn and develop.

The distinction between Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s views was that while Piaget suggested that children work through different stages of learning on their own, Vygotsky (1978) maintained that there is a difference between what children could achieve (and how they could develop) on their own and what children could achieve (and how they could develop) when an adult was able to work with them which was described as the zone of proximal development.

The support given by adults was described as scaffolding by Bruner (1983) . With scaffolding children develop and grow because the adults give support to their thinking and learning process. The term scaffolding is widely used in English language teaching when teachers provide support in the learning process to facilitate the learning either by providing the vocabulary or asking some guiding questions.

Donaldson believed that children were able to cognitively develop by trying to make sense of the experiences that they had, and by asking questions and trying things out, or hypothesizing.

How do children learn language? Children all over the world acquire their native language without formal training and there are some theories regarding the language acquisition process. Chomsky believed that learning was innate, in the sense that every child has an innate capability to learn a language.

This idea of Chomsky’s was followed by the term Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) suggested by Eric Lenneberg who thought that there was a critical period, up to about the age of eleven, in which children were able to learn language. He believed that if language was introduced to children after this age (or this critical period) then it was extremely difficult for them to learn it. This hypothesis has often been cited as one of the main reasons for starting the teaching of foreign languages early in a child’s schooling.

On the other hand, Bruner there is a Language Acquisition Support System (LASS) supplied by adults, or more able mentors, that helps children to develop such a language acquisition device and that this input and support is crucial to the success of language acquisition in children. Children also learn about their world in different ways, using their preferred learning styles. They may be characterized as visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners. A visual learner learns best if they see what is happening and links to their understanding. On the other hand, an auditory learner will need to hear the input, while a kinesthetic learner will learn best if the learning involves physical movement.

Considering children’s preferred learning styles is important because some research showed that there was a correlation between success in language learning and preferred learning styles.

This is also supported by a research conducted by Rosemary Smeets in Switzerland in 2004, who looked at young language learners and VAK learning styles and she found that the students did seem to be able to learn more words when using their preferred learning style (visual, auditory or kinesthetic).

1.2. Variety of methods and strategies in TEYL

Relating the theories above, come implications on TEYL can be drawn on. Firstly, knowing that children learn from the world around them, it is necessary that teachers provide conducive environment for children to learn. Teachers should also make sure that the subject is taught in a very practical, hand-on way that they can interact with actual, physical and here and now or concrete aspects, which is appropriate with their concrete operational stage as suggested by Piaget.

Following Vygotsky’s and Bruner’s views, it is equally essential to support children learning by providing support or scaffolding. This can be done by simplifying the tasks, providing the vocabulary, giving guiding questions or phrases, etc.

Teachers should provide adequate support to the learners, but not excessive, because children’s ability to hypothesize in the new language should not be underestimated. It is also advisable to remember that we are trying to provide opportunities for these learners to find out about and use the new language. The teaching and learning process should be connected with everyday life, and more importantly, should be fun. Children have a short attention span so teachers should be ready with a rich variety of learning activities. Language teachers also have roles as mentors – who must support and scaffold the learning, and as modelers – who must provide good examples of the language in use. As a good model, teachers should make sure that they use the correct forms of language and pronunciation, because children imitate their teachers with deadly accuracy. Providing incorrect model will lead children to fossilize the error until they are adults.

Children’s learning styles must also be taken into account, so teachers should manage activities that accommodate the three main learning styles mentioned previously. For example, teachers can provide interesting pictures, photos, realia and other visual media to facilitate visual learners. The room can be colorfully decorated to attract their attention. Teachers can also give music, songs or audio stimuli for auditory learners and invite students to make physical movement (drawing, jumping, dancing) for kinesthetic learners. The latter one might require a room large enough to move around. Teachers should be prepared with various activities and be flexible to move from one another to prevent boredom, considering children’s short attention span.

Taking into account factors related to young learners, which involve knowledge on how they learn as well as their characteristics into the teaching and learning process will continuously remind teachers to review whether their practices have been in accordance with the principles of teaching English to young learners. This will, in turn, result in a more effective learning.

From the elaboration above, some conclusions can be drawn as follows:

1. Young learners are not necessarily better language learners compared to older ones.

2. Teaching English to young learners is such a challenging task that needs to be handled properly by professional teachers if it is to be successful.

3. Teachers of English to young learners have to understand the basic principles of TEYL, which include knowledge on how the kids learn.

4. The teaching learning practices should consider the young learners’ characteristics which are different from older learners.

5. Children’s preferred learning styles, which include visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles, must also be taken into account.

Followings are some recommendations for teaching English to young learners:

• Provide as wide a range of opportunities as possible;

• Provide vivid, first-hand, new experiences;

• Relate the lessons to what the children already know in a meaningful context

• Use variety of ways to introduce the same idea.

• Organise tasks to stimulate mental activity.

• Provide opportunities for self-expression: when children have learnt something new, give them a chance to apply it on their own.

• Provide opportunities for meaningful conversations.

1.3. Characteristics of Young Learners

For the successful teaching of English in primary schools, above all, it is essential for the teacher to understand the young learners’ characteristics, instincts, and interests in their cognitive, linguistic, and emotional aspects, because this will play a crucial role in how the teacher builds a lesson, how he or she can make sure that the young learners are fully involved in the learning process, how he or she achieves the objectives of a lesson, and how they respond. In this respect, these lines, in the first place, get the English teacher not only to understand general characteristics of the young learners, but also to recognize the qualifications as a primary English teacher. Secondly, the goals, the contents, and the syllabuses of primary English teaching are roughly discussed in terms of the English curriculum in primary schools. And finally, as the main topic of this paper, how to build a lesson for primary English teaching is more specifically discussed, in terms of teaching procedures including its key stages and their sub stages, the learners’ interactions and activities at each stage, and teaching skills and techniques at each sub stage, and so on.

They have short attention span. So teachers should vary their techniques to break the boredom. they should give varied activities as handwriting, songs, games etc.

They are very active. Try to ask them to play games, role play dialogues and involve them in competitions.

They respond well to praising. Always encourage them and praise their work.

They differ in their experience of language. Treat them as a unit, don’t favour those who know some English at the expense of those who do not know.

They are less shy than older learners. Ask them to repeat utterances, resort to mechanical drills.

They are imaginative. Use realia or pictures to teach new vocabulary related to concrete meanings.

They enjoy learning through playing. young learners learn best when they learn through games. Let games be an essential part of your teaching.

They are less shy than older learners.

They enjoy imitating and skilful in listening accurately and mimicking what they have heard.

They respond well to rewards from the teacher.

They are imaginative but may have some difficulties distinguishing between imagination and real.

2. TEACHING VARIOUS ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE

IN PRIMARY SCHOOL

2.1. Teaching Vocabulary to Young Learners

Children are clearly capable of learning foreign language words through participating in the discourse of classroom activities; thus, vocabulary teaching has a centre stage in foreign language teaching. Besides, although opinions differ in how much grammar can be taught, vocabulary learning can be a stepping stone to learning and using grammar.

Very young children learn vocabulary items related to the different concepts they are learning. When children learn numbers or colours in their native language, they are adding concepts as well as vocabulary items.

When vocabulary items are taught before an activity, the students may benefit from it in two ways:

1. It helps them comprehend the activity better.

2.It is more likely that they acquire the target vocabulary words.

Primary school children should be exposed to vocabulary items repeatedly in rich contexts. We can’t expect them to learn the items we teach and to remember all in the lesson two days later. Thus, a newly taught word should reappear many times and in different situations for the following weeks of instruction. The vocabulary items should be revisited/recycled in different activities, with different skills and for multiple times.

Another important component of vocabulary teaching in primary school classes is deep processing, which means working with the information at a high cognitive and personal level. Deep processing makes it more likely to remember the information, as the students build connections between new words and prior knowledge. Instead of memorizing list of words and their meanings, personalizing vocabulary lessons greatly helps students’ deep processing.

Dictionaries and vocabulary notebooks help the EFL and ESL instruction as a tool. Picture dictionaries for very young learners show the vocabulary items in different categories and help YL increase their vocabulary knowledge and their use of contextual clues. That’s why, it is important to teach them how to use a dictionary and guide them while using electronic dictionaries. They may also create their own picture dictionary by drawing or cutting/pasting pictures from newspapers or magazines.

Some of the useful classroom activities for YL are:

a) Connecting vocabulary to young learners’ lives through personalizing;

b) Word for the day;

c) Categories;

d) Scavenger hunt;

e) What’s missing?

f) Mystery words;

g) Concentration;

h) Vocabulary basket.

As Vygotsky states, although children may use the same words with adults, they may not hold the same meaning for those words. The acquisition of word meaning takes much longer than the acquisition of the spoken form of the words, and children use words in their speech long before they have a full understanding of them.

If we had to have complete knowledge of words before using them, we would be restricted to very limited vocabulary. In this sense, our production races a head of our comprehension and vocabulary development is a continuous process not just adding new words but of building up knowledge about words we already know partially.

Vocabulary development is also about learning more about those words and about learning formulaic phrases or chunks, finding words inside them and learning even more about those words.

Increasing the depth of vocabulary knowledge does not happen automatically in a foreign language, even in most favorable circumstances such as immersion programs. Conceptual knowledge grows as children experience more of the world in their daily lives. It depends on the maturation factor as well.

Younger children tend to make syntagmatic associations, choosing a linking idea in a word from a different part of speech or word class (dog: bark). Older children are more likely to respond to cue words with words from the same word class (dog: animal), which is called pragmatic responses. Children’s shift to pragmatic responses reflects other developments:

I. They become more able to deal with abstract connections (dog is an animal) and develop skills for working with ideas and talking about what is not present.

II. They build up more knowledge of the world and words, and ways of organizing, classifying, labeling, categorizing, comparing and contrasting them.

The words for basic level concepts are the most commonly used words, they are learnt by children before words higher or lower in the hierarchy and they are more likely to have been mastered than superordinate and subordinate levels that develop through formal education. Early vocabulary learning may be ineffective, if words are not consolidating (unite) and used regularly.

Techniques in presenting the meaning of new items to Young learners:

I. Demonstration;

a) Visuals: Magazine Pictures/ Flash Cards/ Filmstrips/ Photographs/ Images from TV or video;

b) Real Objects (Realia);

c) Black/white board drawings;

d) Mime, gestures, acting;

II. Verbal Explanation;

a) Definition Lexical Meaning (requires preexisting knowledge);

b) Putting the word in a defining context (requires preexisting knowledge);

c) Translation: (This doesn’t require learner to do some mental work in constructing a meaning for the new foreign language word).

Difficulties in learning vocabulary may result from that vocabulary not being sufficiently connected to pupil’s real lives. In order to extend children’s vocabulary beyond textbook:

1) working outwards from the text book;

2) learner(s) choice;

3) incidental learning through stories.

Strategy use changes with age, and successful and less successful learners vary in what strategies they use and in how they use them.

Teachers have to encourage young learners to adapt vocabulary learning strategies:

• Guessing meaning;

• Noticing grammatical information about words;

• Noticing links to similar words in first language (cognates);

• Remembering where a word has been encountered before;

• World knowledge.

Teachers can model strategy use, teach sub-skills needed to make use of strategies, include classroom tasks for strategy use, rehearse independent strategy use and help young learners reflect on their learning process through evaluating their achievement.

Back to the board: divide your students into two or three groups. One volunteer from each group sits in a chair with their back to the board, facing their group. Write a word on the board so that the volunteer can't see the word. The group have to give clues to their volunteer until he or she guesses the word first. The first one to guess the word gets a point for their team.

Shark: try a variation on hangman by drawing a shark in the sea with its mouth wide open and lots of teeth. Draw 10 steps going into the shark’s mouth. Indicate the word to be guessed with lines a la regular hangman. Each time a student says the wrong letter draw a stick man going down the steps. They lose (and get eaten by the shark!) if the stick men run out of steps.

Chinese whispers: put students in a circle. Whisper a word to the student on your left. He or she whispers the word to the person on their left and so on. The last person to hear the word has to write it on the board. Change places to give everyone a go.

Odd one out: write up four words on the board, one of which is the odd one out e.g. cheeky, happy, curly, nice. 'Curly' is the odd the out because it describes physical appearance and the others all describe character. Get your learners to make their own examples and test each other.

2.2. Teaching Grammar in Primary Classes

Young learners have a long time ahead of them with the language. There is no need to rush into technical rules and labels that will confuse. It seems likely to be far better to give children a sound basis in using the language while encouraging curiosity and talk about patterns and contrasts in and between languages and introducing grammatical metalanguage slowly and meaningfully. Thus, teachers should develop internal grammar.

In the beginning stages, learners seem to use words or chunks strung together to get their meaning across with little attention paid to grammar that would fit the words or chunks together in conversational patterns. So how these collections of items turn into something more like a language with patterns of grammar?

If you can get your message through without grammar, then there may be a little impulse to drive grammar learning. Paying attention to grammatical features of a language is not something that happens automatically in communicating and that therefore some artificial methods of pushing attention are needed: teaching.

Rote-learned chunks of language will make up a substantial part of early learning and that learnt chunks also provide a valuable resource for developing grammar as they are broken down and re-constituted. Ways of teaching that help learners notice words inside chunks and how other words can be used in the same places may help with the development of grammar.

Children build hypotheses about how the foreign language works from the data they have received from their limited experience with the language. Errors in language use can often act as a window on to the developing internal grammar of the learner and are signals of growth.

When data is limited, learners are more likely to use their first language to fill the gaps. So the learners may assume that foreign language grammar works like first language grammar. If the foreign language cues are not particular obvious, the probability of them being noticed and used is even smaller. It is precisely these cross-linguistically different and low profile features of grammar that need form-focused instruction.

Principles for learning-centered grammar teaching

It would not be conceptually appropriate for grammar to be explicitly taught as formal, explicit rules in young learner classrooms to children under the age of 8 or 9 years. As children get older, so they are increasingly able to learn from more formal instruction but we should remember that grammar teaching can often destroy motivation and puzzle children rather than enlighten them. Good learning centered grammar teaching will be meaningful & interesting, require active participation from learners and will work with how children learn and what they are capable of learning. The principles are:

Grammatical accuracy and precision is a matter for meaning. Without attention to form, form will not be learnt accurately.

Form-focused instruction is particularly relevant for those features of the foreign language grammar that are different from the first language or are not very noticeable.

If learners’ attention is directed to expressing meaning, they may neglect attention to accuracy and position.

Teaching can help learners notice and attend to features of grammar in the language they hear and read or speak and write.

Noticing an aspect of form is the first stage of learning it; it then needs to become part of the learner’s internal grammar, and to become part of the learner’s language resources ready for use in a range of situations.

Learning grammar as the development of internal grammar

The learner has to do the learning; just teaching grammar does not make it happen.

Grammar learning can work outwards from participation in discourse from vocabulary and from learnt chunks.

Learners’ errors can give teachers useful information about their learning processes and their internal grammar.

The role of explicit teaching of grammar rules

Teaching grammar explicitly requires the learner to think about language in very abstract, formal ways that some enjoy and some find difficult. The younger the learner, the less appropriate it is to teach explicitly. Children can master metalanguage if it is well taught.

Teaching techniques for supporting grammar learning

1.Working from classroom discourse: Routines and classroom contexts can serve to introduce new grammar

a) The language for classroom management: Some very simple phrases for classroom management can be introduced and as time goes by, these can be expanded. Pupils can use some phrases originally used by the teacher when they work in pairs/ groups.

b) Talking with children: If a child offers a comment about a picture, for example, the teacher can respond with fuller sentences that pick up the child’s interests. Talk with children as a class can also offer incidental focusing on form.

2. Guided noticing activities:

a) Listen and Notice: Filling a grid while listening to a conversation. Noticing the grammatical features is important to fill the grid.

b) Presentation of new language with puppets: The children listen several times to the story-dialogue: repetition + contrast

3. Language practice activities that offer structuring opportunities

a) Questionnaires, surveys & quizzes: Preparation and rehearsal of the questions is necessary to ensure accuracy; the activity must be managed so that the questions are asked in full each time. (Do you like …?)

b) Information gap activities: (Calendar)

c) Helping hands:

d) Drills and chants: The dangers of over-using drills occur mostly if the children do not understand the content, and drills are then a mechanical exercise in making a noise, rather than language learning opportunities. Repetition drills can help in familiarizing a new form but substitution drills are the ones that offer more for grammar structuring.

4. Proceduralising activities:

a) Polar animal description re-visited: Description of the animal they choose the description needs some grammatical knowledge that has already entered the internal grammar through noticing and structuring.

b) Dictogloss: the teacher reads out a text, students take notes and re-write the text in pairs/ groups.

5. Introducing metalanguage:

a) Explicit teacher talk: Useful and possible to talk about language without using technical terms.

b) Cloze activities for word class:

2.3. Teaching pronunciation in YL classes

Young children need to “hear” the different sounds in a foreign language, hence the importance of working with rhymes and songs and of listening to material as much as possible, right from the beginning. Good pronunciation comes gradually as the children learn to distinguish different sounds.

• Do not over-correct pronunciation. Instead, focus on a particular sound and ask children to pronounce it one by one. This should help them to really hear it.

• Pay special attention to the English sounds that are problematic for speakers of a particular language. For example, distinguishing the [i] and [i:].

• Make sure that your pupils see your lips when you speak. Different facial muscles are used for speaking different languages.

• The ability to pronounce specific sounds in L1 can come as late as four or five years old. (If a child is already bilingual, there may be interference and he may need a little longer to perfect his ability). It is perfectly normal for a young child not to be able to pronounce certain sounds in L1 and the same will occur in English. The majority of children will get over this problem when they are older.

Traditional songs are particularly useful for developing pronunciation and acclimatising young learners to the sounds of the language. Songs are important for developing awareness of stress patterns and rhythm. You could concentrate on a particular sound and ask children to count how many times they hear it in a song, or you could represent patterns on the board with circles and ask children to clap them.

Introducing the songs. It is a good idea to warm up for a song by providing some input. You could do this by using visuals of the main vocabulary items, or using realia. For Old MacDonald for example you can practise animal vocabulary with flashcards or small toy animals. For the Goldilocks song you could provide some household items, e.g. 3 bowls and cutlery.

When you introduce the song allow the students to watch and listen to the song a couple of times to become familiar with the tune. Explain the meaning of unfamiliar words to the children using the visuals in the flash animations. Ask children to point to the correct visuals or items of realia as they listen. Children usually start to sing along naturally without much prompting from the teacher. You can print off the lyrics for most songs and hand them out in class. Children can practise at home!

Once children are familiar with the tune and the words, there are many ways in which we can exploit traditional songs. One of the simplest is performing actions to accompany the song.

You can invent actions for songs. For example in the “Goldilocks” song you can show size for “big”, “small” and “tiny” by stretching your arms out wide. Make a roof over your head with your hand when you sing “house”. You can ask students to help you invent actions for songs!

Other songs are good for reinforcing structures and grammar. For example the song “This is the way we brush our teeth” is excellent for practising present tense and provides ample opportunity for acting out with gestures for each part of the daily routine. You could extend the vocabulary by making other verses to practise other actions in a daily routine, depending on the items you are teaching.

3. TEACHING COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS IN PRIMARY CLASSROOM

3.1. Listening in young learner classes

First of all, we need to give students a reason to listen. Giving activities before, during and after listening means that students are not just listening but are engaged in the task, and actually doing something with what they hear. We should also use English in class as much as possible so our students get maximum listening practice. Even if you are not confident with your own accent they will be learning more than if you speak only to them in your first language.

10 Rules of Listening in Young Learner Classes

1. Although listening is a receptive skill, the students are not and should not be passive while listening; in other words, they should be engaged and/or work in the listening task actively.

2. The students should be engaged with different listening tasks according to their age, learning style, listening capacity and phonological awareness.

3. The language teachers should train the students to listen to the English sounds carefully.

4. The teachers should train the young learners to follow simple instructions to get them ready to develop other language skills.

5. Different listening tasks should be addressed in class:

Listen & Do Listen & Draw;

Listen & Colour Listen & Mime Listen & Predict Listen & Respond;

Listen & Write (needs literacy);

Listen & Identify (may need literacy) Listen & Match (may need literacy) Listen & Complete (needs literacy);

Listen & Read (model for pronunciation);

6. The students should be given a different task each time they listen to the same text. (i.e.: First, listen to have a general idea; second listen to complete the blanks; third, listen to check your answers);

7. Input through tapes, videos or teacher modelling should be provided; the audio tools should be in good quality.

8. The teachers should be aware of the importance of familiarity (with the context, language, task, voice ...etc.), difficulty (what is expected as the output) and teacher’s language (repeating, simplifying, and using gestures, intonation and formulaic expressions that help children to figure out the intended meaning).

9. It is important to embed listening into stories, games, routines, rhymes, songs. They may not understand every word, but they can understand the meaning from the context, visuals, and gestures as in real life.

10. Both bottom-up (requiring linguistic knowledge) and top-down (requiring world knowledge) listening should be addressed.

The use of the listening materials in class.

Before listening to songs, short stories or kids talk videos, you could:

Introduce the topic and revise or pre-teach vocabulary with flashcards. Remember you can make your own flashcards with our flashcard maker tool. You could drill new words with the learners then play a quick game with the cards. For example, show the class some flashcards then mix them up and remove one – ask which one is missing. Alternatively, show the students 10 cards then turn them over and ask them to remember the pictures.

If there is a pre-listening activity (for example, a matching or jigsaw task which appears automatically on the screen), do this with your learners to set the scene and learn some vocabulary before listening.

Look at the still image of the story, song or video before you listen, ask students to predict which words they are going to hear and what it’s going to be about. Write the students’ ideas and words on the board.

Tasks that students can do during listening include:

Checking whether their predictions about which words they would hear are correct. Completing the printable worksheets or answering questions. Most of the songs, short stories and kids talk videos have printable worksheets or questions to answer directly under each item.

Students probably need to listen more than once to complete these tasks. The first time they listen for the main idea, then in subsequent listenings for more detail and more depth of understanding.

Singing along to songs of course! Actions will make the song more memorable and fun. Kids will love copying the actions they see on the screen but feel free to make up your own too!

After listening you could:

Use the transcripts of the videos for language focus, for example, picking out useful expressions, question words, or negative/positive verb structures. Find the transcripts under each video.

Do any extension activities on the printable worksheets.

Use the listening activity as a starting point for project work on a similar theme. There are craft downloads (masks, puppets, pictures to colour and more) available which you might find useful for this.

With very young learners:

You could introduce the listening topic and focus attention with puppets. The puppet can talk about a song or story or point to pictures related to the listening material. Use a simple picture on a stick or even a sock.

While children are listening, get them to respond physically to what they hear. They can point to flash cards on the wall when they hear or see certain characters or words. They could also stand up or shout out each time they hear certain words – depending on how noisy or active you want the children to be. As we mentioned earlier, you can invent actions for songs or let the children invent their own, taking it in turns to be the leader.

Use flashcards for a ‘run and touch’ activity after listening. You say the word, then learners run (or hop or swim, etc.) to that flashcard on the wall.

Extra activities for listening

Practise and revise lexical sets with the listening games and activities in Fun with English. These are great for individual work on a visit to the computer room, to revise vocabulary, a treat at the end of class, a change of focus in class, or as a warmer at the start of the lesson.

Students have to listen carefully for specific information to click their way around the mazes. There are mazes on sports, weather, money, and music.

Identipet, spot the dragon and face match ask students to listen to descriptions and match with the correct picture.

Practise listening to the time, the world weather, and Ryan spending his pocket money and more in the interactive listening activities.

Tongue twisters are fantastic for pronunciation practice and lots of fun to listen to. Read tips on using this section here.

All these activities are aimed at a productive use of the language that goes well beyond the simple reproduction of sound items, however. It presupposes knowledge of the meaning of lexical items and the ability to functionally use them in speech acts.

3.2. Speaking in Primary School

The value and role of speaking skills can hardly be exaggerated. First of all, we must take into account that the level of language input (listening) must be higher than the level of language production expected of the pupils. So we have many speaking activities used in the first levels that enable pupils to participate with a minimal verbal response. However in the last levels, pupils are encouraged to begin to manipulate language and express themselves in a much more personal way.

In primary schools two main types of speaking activities are used. The first type, songs, chants, and poems, encourages pupils to mimic the model they hear on the cassette. This helps pupils to master the sounds, rhythms, and intonation of the English language through simple reproduction. The games and pair work activities on the other hand, although always based on a given model, encourage the pupils to begin to manipulate the language by presenting them with a certain amount of choice, albeit within a fairly controlled situation.

In order for any speaking activity to be successful children need to acknowledge that there is a real reason for asking a question or giving a piece of information. Therefore, make sure the activities you present to the pupils, provide a reason for speaking, whether this is to play a game or to find out real information about friends in the class.

Once the activity begins, make sure that the children are speaking as much English as possible without interfering to correct the mistakes that they will probably make. Try to treat errors casually by praising the utterance and simply repeating it correctly without necessarily highlighting the errors. And finally, always offer praise for effort regardless of the accuracy of the English produced.

10 Rules of Speaking in Young Learner Classes

1. Although it is a productive skill, the children may not feel ready to produce oral language, so teachers and parents should be patient.

2. Short practice activities can help students build productive language to use in discourse.Speaking starts with practicing drills, set phrases (junks and formulaic expressions), repeating models, so it is important to use such activities to make them familiar with repetitive language. However, the language should be used meaningfully in the classroom, not just in isolated chunks.

3. Children need experience of a range of discourse types to increase their skills, so the tasks designed for in-class use should be varied.

4. The teachers should take into account the developmental stages in L1, those in L2, and students’ age to design the speaking activities.

5. Correcting each and every mistake is discouraging and they need help to acquire fluency. Before the speaking, we may teach them the necessary language and the vocabulary items to prepare them for the tasks.

6. Designing authentic activities, such as role-plays and dialogues based on real life conversations, motivates the students, so they willingly take the role of an imaginary person. However, the meaning and purpose of discourse needs to be made comprehensible to the learners.

7. The teachers should be aware of the problems young learners may have while articulating phonemes. It is important not to ignore the pronunciation, intonation and stress: Using tongue twisters, mirrors, imitating native speakers in movies can be some of the useful activities.

8. Speaking is not an individual skill; they need to be encouraged to practice in pairs and in groups.

9. A good speaking activity should involve all students not some of them.

10. When the class is noisy in a speaking activity, trying to shout over children is not a good idea: Using the lights, symbols or music may help.

3.3. Learning the Literacy Skills. Important Concepts for Teaching Reading and Writing in Young Learner Classes

Second language literacy is a complicated area and as far as young learners are concerned there is much that remains unknown.

The transferability of knowledge, skills and strategies across languages depends closely on how the two written languages work; it will be different for each pair of languages and for each direction of learning.

English is a complicated alphabetic written language and almost always requires learners of it as a foreign language to develop new skills and knowledge in addition to what can be transferred.

The way the child is being or has been taught to read the first language will create expectations about how foreign language reading will be taught.

Phonological awareness in the foreign language, the ability to hear the individual sounds and syllables that make up words will develop from oral language activities such as saying rhymes or chants and singing songs.

In the early stages, children should only encounter written words that they already know orally. If a text contains unknown words, then either the meanings of these need to be explained in advance, or the meanings must be completely obvious from the rest of the text.

Teaching reading and writing can utilize and transferable knowledge and skills from first language literacy such as sounding out words and breaking words into syllables or morphemes and can provide more focused instruction in skills and strategies that have not been used before and are needed for literacy in English.

Objectives for readers up to 7

Enjoy being read to form a range of books; enjoy looking at books.

Learn how text is written down in lines and pages with spaces between words, capital and small letter.

Learn to copy short sentences that have a personal meaning and read them aloud. Learn a basic set of words.

Being spotting words and letters.

Listen to rhymes, chants and songs and by joining in with them, learn by heart and be able to say or sing them.

Learn names, shapes and sounds of some initial consonants Begin to learn the alphabet in order by name

Creating a literate environment in the classroom

Labels: Labeling children’s coat hooks, desks, crayons, which will familiarize children with written forms. There should not be too many labels and they should be changed after a week or so. (A butterfly or a star on one label each day)

Posters: Advertising posters can be fun, but if the teachers have ethical problems with using commercial adverts in class, then posters can be made to advertise healthy eating or teeth cleaning or borrowing library books.

Messages: English message on board.

Reading aloud. Teacher reads aloud; children just listen and perhaps look at the pictures. Teacher uses a big book with large enough print so that all children can see.

Each child uses a text.

Children choose the books they want to hear or read

Children are motivated by choice and by the quality of the writing they encounter Children often choose to read the same book many times and this is a valuable learning experience

Meaning comes first because the child understands the story as a whole

From this overall meaning, attention moves to whole words and letters, beginning with initial consonants, then final consonants then vowels in the middle

The link between reading and oral skills is very strong because children adapt and play with the language of the story

Extensive Reading. The teacher encourages the students tochoose for themselves what they read forpleasure and general languageimprovement outside the class.

The students should read materials on the topics they are interested in and materials appropriate for their level.

Original fiction and non-fiction books, simplified works of literature, staged books, magazines can all be used.

In order to encourage extensive reading we can build up a library of suitable books, provide them with extensive reading tasks and encourage them to report back on the reading in different ways.

Intensive Reading. It is a classroom-oriented activity to have students focus on the semantic and linguistic details.

In order to encourage students to read enthusiastically in class, teachers need to create interest in the topic and tasks.

Teachers need to tell students the reading purpose, the instructions and time allocated. While the students are reading, the teachers may observe their progress but should not interrupt.

When the teachers ask students to give answers, they should always ask them to say where in the text they found the relevant information.

The teachers should focus on strategies to deal with the unknown vocabulary items.

Bottom-up Processing: Magnifying glass. Readers must recognize the linguistic signals (letters, syllables, words, phrases, discourse markers)

This data-driven processing requires a sophisticated knowledge of the language.

From the data, the reader selects the meaningful signal.

Top-down Processing: Eagle’s eye view. Readers must refer to their own intelligence and experience to predict probable meaning and to understand a text.

This conceptually-driven processing requires readers to infer meaning.

Schema or Background Knowledge. The readers bring information, knowledge, emotion, memories, experience and culture to the printed word.

Content schemata include what we know about people, the world, culture and the universe;

Formal schemata include what we know about the discourse structure. While reading, they contribute to the text with more information than the text provides.

Skill in reading depends on the efficient interaction between linguistic knowledge and world knowledge.

Interest and Culture. The love of reading has propelled learners to successful acquisition of reading skills.

The autonomy and self-esteem gained through reading strategies has been shown to be a powerful motivator.

Culture plays an important role in motivating and rewarding young learners for literacy.

Teaching Vocabulary. Pre-teaching some of the vocabulary items from the text helps reading comprehension for top-down processing.

Focusing on some of the vocabulary items after reading the text provides a detailed analysis of the text through bottom-up processing.

Guessing Vocabulary. Using the contextual clues, the parts of the word, world knowledge and cognates helps readers to develop strategies to do not only intensive but also extensive reading.

Reading Aloud/ Oral reading. Oral reading helps students correspond between spoken and written English in beginner levels.

It can serve as a pronunciation check activity and add some extra student participation for short reading segments in the beginner and intermediate levels

It is not an authentic activity and while one student is reading, the others may easily lose attention.

Silent Reading. Silent reading allows readers interact with the text; thus, the teachers should not interrupt while the students are reading.

Silent reading allows students to read at their own rate and to identify more than one word at a time.

The schemata and background knowledge and affective domain help the reader interact with the text.

Sustained silent reading develops a fluency in reading.

Decoding. This requires the learners to read and recognize the symbols that form or make up words. When readers decode, they make sense of individual words.

Decoding can be problematic when the language does not have a one-to-one sound letter correspondence.

Comprehension. Just because a learner knows how to pronounce written words correctly does not mean that he can read.

Reading comprehension refers to reading for meaning and understanding. Thus, it involves higher order thinking skills and more than just decoding words.

Teaching children how to derive meaning as well as analyze and synthesize what they have read is an essential part of the reading process.

Reading for Pleasure. If a student knows that s/he can get pleasure from reading stories in her own language, she may be able to make the connection that reading in general can provide pleasure.

Fortunately, modern coursebooks are increasingly using stories as a vital component, although they were ignored or were not made more use of for years.

Reading for Information. Reading for information can be as simple as reading a menu in a restaurant. Reading for information can also give children pleasure, if they have a purpose in reading a text to learn something such as reading a cookbook, a book on model air planes, a book on dinosaurs.

3.4. Strategies in teaching reading

Teachers devote a great amount of time to develop reading skills and strategies to help students use the contextual clues (determine the meaning), make use of the background knowledge (to activate schemata and to predict) and/or adapt different comprehension techniques (to organize the information the text)

Assigning Reading.

Teachers only ask students to read and they check the answers.

This does not aim to develop or improve skills or strategies of reading but to test the general reading ability.

A. Activities to prepare children for reading

1. Using illustrations. It is always a good idea to exploit pictures to help the child understand and visualise the story. The stories have illustrations which can be used to introduce the story, elicit vocabulary they know, introduce difficult words in that story, and generally excite the interest of the child for the story. Ask learners to look at the picture before reading, and ask questions such as ‘who are the people?’; ‘what are they wearing?’ (and why?); ‘what is the cat holding?’'; ‘what has happened?’; ‘how is the woman feeling?’ etc. Learners will be introduced to vocabulary, will be more able to understand the text, and will be more engaged in the reading task.

2. Pre-teaching vocabulary. Many of the stories are related to a definite topic. These topics can have ‘specialist’ vocabulary which may cause problems in comprehension. You should find related exercises on thematic vocabulary which can be taught first.

3. Introduce the theme. Many of the stories are related to a topic. It can be a good idea to familiarise learners with the topic before reading, by trying activities related to the topic on the site, by setting a task to find out about the topic (this could even be for homework), or by discussion (in your own language with lower level learners if you like). For example the story ‘Football Crazy’ is about a girl playing in a boys football team, breaking down barriers, adults treating boys and girls differently. This is an important issue for children. Before reading the story you could ask your learners to name famous footballers, and once you have a list you could see how many famous players are women. Then you can ask more questions such as ‘why are there so few famous female football players?’, ‘what about other sports?’ etc.

4. Input cultural background. Many stories assume a knowledge of cultural norms in the UK, for example, the daily school routine. Children are usually interested in finding out the differences between their own culture and the lives of children in the UK. Some stories have more overt cultural background. In some stories typical sights of London are mentioned, such as ‘Big Ben’, ‘The London Eye’ and ‘Madame Tussauds’. You could use a map or guidebook to London to find out what these are before children read or listen to the story.

B. Activities during reading

1. Use a variety of ways to read. There are many different ways to approach the story. It is quite likely that younger learners will want to read/hear/or listen to the story several times, particularly the shorter, flash-animated ones. This should not be discouraged as it helps learners to equate oral and written forms which is important for the development of reading skills. In the classroom it is important to vary the kind of reading.

The teacher could use a data projector for a class to listen to/read a story as a whole-class activity.

The teacher could read the whole or parts of the story to a class with the text.

The learners can read by themselves silently, either on-screen whether at school or even as homework.

Some stories can be read as texts with illustrations and then children can watch the flash movie version, or this order could be reversed.

2. Sustaining reading. If the story is very long then it is important to keep the class motivated to read. The teacher could stop at convenient ‘cliff-hanger’ points and ask the class ‘what happens next?’ This use of prediction skills makes the learners want to read on to the end of the story to find out if their own idea is correct. In a classroom this could be done as a ‘guessing game’ if the teacher is controlling the pace of reading.

3. Total physical response. With very young or active learners the story can be mimed while the teacher reads or the children listen.

4. Characters and voices. In stories which have a lot of characters you could ask students to read the dialogue of the characters. The teacher could read the dialogue of characters in different voices first. You could even create a class project which involves rewriting this (or another) story as a play which could be performed ‑ perhaps with costumes.

C. Post-reading activities

1. Quick comprehension check. It is always a good idea to do a quick comprehension check when your learners have finished reading the story, or at the end of each page of the text. This may take the form of a few ‘gist’ questions about the text in oral form, asking children for a response e.g. why is this person sad, which character did the children like etc. This could be done in written form.

2. Make a poster/illustrate the story. You can use any story as an opportunity for some creative drawing and illustration, perhaps with vocabulary labels in English.

3.5. Strategies in teaching writing

It should be noted that in writing, children who have mastered letters shapes and spelling can be encouraged to write gradually more. To become a fluent writer, it is necessary to write often at length.

If children leave their early foreign language learning able to read and write simple texts in the foreign language and use a good range of reading strategies, they will have a solid foundation for future literacy development.

Stimulus for writing. Many stories lend themselves to acting as a stimulus for creative writing, depending on the level of your learners. Younger learners or learners who have a lower level of English could use one of the simpler stories as a model for a story of their own. Examples are ‘My Dad’ (learners write about a member of their own family) or ‘Magic Spell’ (learners choose their own ingredients and outcomes). Learners with a higher level of English could write more complex stories, for example, their own story based in a haunted house (where did they go? What did they see? What happened?)

Role-play/acting out. Interpreting stories as role-play can be as simple or complicated as you like. It could start with miming basic actions, then speaking or improvising dialogue. In the classroom the teacher will need to be organised in advance with moving furniture, providing simple props etc. You could even use facepaints.

Process Writing. When teaching writing to the children, we must recognize the complexity of the process; that’s why it should be supported (ZPD and scaffolding).

This refers to the act of gathering ideas and working with them until they are presented in a manner that is polished and comprehensible to the readers.

It emphasizes the fluency in the writing process.

Product Writing. It is concerned with the final product of writing; in other words the essay, the project, the report, what that product should look like.

Writing is seen as a product and the students are evaluated according to what they write in this product.

The teacher tests writing rather than teaching it.

The student cannot make use of the feedback s/he receives.

Individual Writing. The student composes the required piece of writing himself/herself. Since writing is a personal skill; asking the students to continue a story, to write a diary entry, to discuss an opinion is not appropriate to work in pairs or in groups.

Group Writing. The children can work on a writing project to write different parts or sections of an assignment as long as it is carefully organized.

They can contribute to a whole class story, create a group book, or report a science report.

4. EDUCATION PROCESS AND ITS ORGANIZATION IN PRIMARY SCHOOL

4.1. Lesson Planning. Thematic Syllabus for YL

The syllabus for young learners depends on the choice and organization of course/coursebook content. There are such Syllabus Types: Structural Syllabus (grammar); Lexical Syllabus (vocabulary items, collocations); Skills-based Syllabus (listening, speaking, reading, writing – in isolation/combination) Functional (apologize, promise) ‑ Notional (size) Syllabus; Situational Syllabus (Situations where specific language is used: At the restaurant); Task-based Syllabus (Real life tasks: using a map to give instructions); Topic-based (Content teaching through an interesting/ relevant subject/ topic); Theme-based Syllabus.

Theme-Based Syllabus

Theme-based teaching has been practiced since the 1960s in UK primary classrooms, where children spend all day with the same teacher. Theme-based teaching requires teachers to choose a theme or topic and then to plan a range of teaching and learning activities related to the theme that incorporated aspects of mathematics, science art, language, history, geography, music and so on. Then, theme-based teaching has been transferred across from general primary education to the teaching of English as a foreign language.

The essential notion of theme-based teaching is that many activities are linked together by their content: the theme of topic runs through everything happens in the classroom and acts as a connecting thread. In the simplest version of theme-based foreign language teaching, a topic provides content for a range of language learning activities.

Effective theme-based teaching is extremely demanding on teachers in both planning and in implementation; knowledge of a wide repertoire of activity types and resources is needed to plan for children of all abilities and to avoid them spending too long on cognitively less demanding activities such as drawing pictures. Skilled management of class, pair work and group work is needed to keep all children actively learning. Theme-based teaching can be used in large and small amounts and in varying concentrations. It can be adopted for one or two lessons in a week or for several weeks in a term, or could replace the coursebook and syllabus altogether.

Theme-based teaching can be tightly planned in advance or it can be allowed to evolve on-line through dynamic teaching and learning, that changes direction in the light of task outcomes, developing and evolving with the emerging interests of children and teacher.

Stages of Preparing Theme-based Syllabus

1. Finding a theme. Finding a theme is the easiest part. A theme can come from the students’ current interests, from topics being studied in other classes, from a story or from a local/ international event.

2. Planning the content. a. Brainstorming: A theme can be considered as including: People + Objects + Actions + Processes + Typical Events + Places.

The ideas gathered through brainstorming can be grouped into sub-themes or topics. From these sub-themes/ topics, planning can move to identifying texts of different discourse, activities and language goals.

A brainstorm can also be used to produce guiding questions (Journalist’s questioning) for the sequence and content of the activities.

b. Web: Building up web linking activities to areas of the school curriculum: Math’s, technology etc.

Brainstorming and webbing processes will help the teacher identify the types of discourse typically associated with the theme and sub-themes and can be carried out with the children rather than by the teacher alone.

3. Planning the Language Tasks. After the theme and the content have been decided on, a language learning perspective should be determined. That is, language learning tasks and their sequence are organized into stages and fitted to the timing of the lesson.

Advantages of Theme-Based Syllabus.

1. Theme-based work is likely to introduce new vocabulary items with the theme providing support for understanding and recall (retention). Vocabulary items that have already been introduced in the coursebook may be met again in the new context of a theme (recycling).

2. It offers a natural use for a wider range of discourse types, both spoken and written. Themes can include different aspects of the same topic that require different types of discourse. School-activities produce a range of discourse types such as graphs, charts, reports and commentaries.

3. Theme-based work lends itself to the production of displays and performances of various types.

Theme-based teaching is very demanding if it is well done and the students may refer to L1 during pair work or group work activities to complete the tasks. Thus, it requires excellent classroom management skills to keep students on task.

Theme Sub-themes (Topics) Texts (Discourse) Language Tasks

Example

Theme: Space

Topics: The Solar system ‑ Earth’s satellite – Space travel – Nine planets – Mars and Earth Texts: Video on the solar system, two descriptive reading texts, information cards for speaking, internet sources for research

Language learning tasks/activities: Solving a puzzle while watching a documentary, finding the specific information from a reading text, performing the dialogue between the astronauts and the tower in a role-play- searching the internet to write a descriptive paragraph- comparing two planets to show natural facts.

4.2. Lesson Planning for Primary English Teaching

The writing of a lesson plan can help the teacher define and clarify his or her objectives as well as prepare the lesson, as it helps him or her decide what to do and how he or she will do it. It also provides the teacher with a written record of what he or she has done which he or she can look at again after the lesson to evaluate what happened. The teacher could also use the plan again with another class.

Before building a lesson for English teaching for young learners, we need to take into consideration three study approaches suggested as follows: ¨a ) How can teachers make sure that the learners are fully and actively involved in the learning process? ¨B ) How do teachers achieve their objectives in a lesson, and how do the learners respond? ¨C) How can the teaching and learning process use English to the best effect? In brief, we should keep in mind pupils' active involvement, the progress of a lesson, and the teaching of English through English, for successful English teaching for young learners in the classroom.

Instructive Strategies: Stories, Drama and Songs

Stories

Features of Stories: opening: ‘Once upon a time…’, introducing the characters (who), describing the setting (where), introducing the problem (what), resolution of the problem after a series of events (how), closing: …and they all lived happily ever after, moral Lesson (implicit or explicit)

Language use in stories:

1. Parallelism: Repeated patterns: ‘Grandmother, what big eyes you’ve got’, ‘All the better to see you with my dear’.

2. Rich vocabulary: nouns for things, verbs for actions, adjectives for descriptions.

3. Alliteration: red riding.

4. Contrast: good and evil (The Beauty and the Beast).

5. Metaphor: forest: life outside the safety of the family, apple: danger (Snow White).

6. Intertextuality: making references within one text to aspects of another.

7. Narrative/ Dialogue.

Choosing stories.

1. Choose stories that are enjoyable, interesting and motivating, that have characters and a plot that engage children, that help them empathize with the characters, and that include fantastical beings or animals in imaginary worlds.

2. Choose stories that help children feel positive about other countries and cultures and can broaden their knowledge of the world.

3. Choose stories with a clear plot: formulation of a problem, a series of linked events and a resolution of the problem. An element of surprise and unpredictability.

4. Choose stories that have a balance of dialogue and narrative; repeated patterns of language.

5. Choose stories that have the built-in repetition of words and phrases.

6. Choose stories that have new language, but not so much that the story becomes incomprehensible

Using a story.

1. Listening: Listening to the teacher read or tell a story is a useful language learning activity at any age; using story books does not have to be about teaching reading. Listening to a story practices the ability to hold in mind the meaning of an extended piece of spoken discourse. If a story appeals the children, they will want to hear it again and again.

2. Reading: Brain storming (talking about the background of the story)- Pre-teaching the key vocabulary items (if necessary)- Reading (once or twice with different tasks, reading part by part and/or reading until the resolution)- follow-up activities

3. Speaking: Acting roles (dialogue), retelling the story (characters in other situations or characters beyond the story), writing the dialogues of the story, retelling the story from another point of view etc.

4. Writing: Using the discourse of the story in other contexts, rewriting the story with differences in events, completing an unfinished story, extending a finished story, rewriting from a different point of view, rewriting as a character in the story...etc.

What to keep in mind while using stories.

Selection.

1. Read, read, read.

2. Choose stories you like.

3. Choose stories appropriate for your learners.

4. Choose stories with a simple structure.

5. Choose stories with positive values.

6. Study the story’s background.

7. Test your selection.

Preparation.

1. Learn the story.

2. Outline the story.

3. Control the story’s length.

4. Control the story’s vocabulary.

5. Refine your storytelling style.

6. Practice, practice, practice.

7. Relax before telling.

Presentation.

1. Start on the right foot.

2. Express enthusiasm and enjoyment.

3. Concentrate on your voice.

4. Maintain eye-contact.

5. Help with your hands and body.

6. Use props sparingly: objects, costumes, puppets and bells.

7. Pay attention the physical setting: quiet, well-lit, comfortable.

Follow-up.

1. Ask comprehension questions.

2. Invent exercises in phonetics, semantics and syntax.

3. Do listening activities:

4. Do oral activities.

5. Do written activities.

6. Do visual activities.

7. Do creative drama activities.

Songs.

The students should be given a task to follow and/or complete while they listen to the song. Following the lyrics of a song only is not an effective method.

Pre-listening to the song.

The teacher may pre-teach 1‑2 vocabulary items or revisit the already learnt items.

The students may be asked to predict the song (if they haven’t listened to it before), or talk about the song (if they are familiar).

Before they start listening, the students may also be given the incomplete lyrics of the song to complete through prediction using the contextual clues.

While listening.

The students may listen to the song and check their predictions in terms of content and language, identify a group of vocabulary items (adjectives, nouns, verbs; antonyms, synonyms; names of places, people etc.), complete the missing parts of the song (words or sentences), reorder the lyrics and so on.

Post listening.

The students should be encouraged to use the information or language provided by the song in a follow up activity, so they may rewrite the song, discuss on the main idea presented in the song, write a comment, a letter, a note about the idea in the song and so on.

Drama.

Role-Play: The students have a new identity.

Simulations: The students have their own identity in a real life task.

Picture Talk: They have the identity of the people in the picture given; the picture can be taken from an old or a recent, and a seen or an unseen movie.

4.3. Classroom Management in Young Learner Classes

Classroom management with young learners is highly important. When you manage the classes, the rest follows easily and quickly. It is necessary to silence the students to teach.

The problem is not instruction, method or technique. The problem is to have students sit down… Almost every teacher’s problem is about classroom management. When the class is silent, they have very good lessons and they leave the classroom happily. They may even say ‘how nice it is to be a teacher’.

Some beginning teachers may have serious problems especially in classroom management in their first year, particularly in a private school. It happens because of the teacher’s inexperience and the hyper activity of the kids.

The teacher should be confident about his competence in subject area in order not to hear students implying ‘the teacher doesn’t know anything’.

Find the source of the problem in the following situations:

1. The teacher asks the students to work in pairs to complete a cutting-coloring activity. She explains what the students do very quickly and she uses the target language all the time. She does not let them ask questions, she does not show them how to cut, paste and color. The students start talking to each other.

2. Two boys are sitting together and they are very angry with each other. They are almost about to fight. The teacher warns them harshly and goes on with her lecture. However, the boys start fighting.

3. The class is working on a vocabulary puzzle activity. The teacher asks the students to work in groups of 4. Some groups are very strong and they easily find the vocabulary items in the puzzle, while some groups are very weak and they give up trying. The teacher is angry with the groups which cannot finish in time.

4. The teacher checks the homework with the class. The students to respond are chosen randomly. Each time a student makes a mistake, others start shouting and giving the correct answers.

5. The class is very crowded and noisy. The students are not happy with the seating arrangement. Some students always want to change where they sit because they cannot see the board clearly or they do not want to sit in front of the windows. However, some students do not. The teacher is tired of dealing with seating problems.

6. It’s the last lesson before the lunch break. The students are really hungry and they do not want to wait for the lunch queue. After two minutes, the bell will ring. However, the teacher asks the class to copy 10 sentences on the board. The students are really pissed off and they are complaining. The teacher becomes very angry and does not let them go for lunch before they finish the sentences.

7. The new unit in the text book is about ‘travelling’. All of the students are very excited to tell their travelling experiences. However, the teacher starts telling her own experiences. At the beginning the students are really happy to hear them, but later they get bored of listening and they start whispering their experiences to each other in their mother tongue.

8. It is time to listen to a song. The students are very excited, but the teacher does not know how to use the new tape recorder. She tries for a few times, and then one of the students helps her with the tape. When the students are ready to listen, they realize that the quality of the cassette is very poor and no matter how high the volume is, the students cannot hear properly.

9. The teacher has planned to finish the unit in the text book. However, half of the class has gone for the Children’s Bayram rehearsal. There are only 12 students in class and they do not want to study English, all they want to do is to play a game or to chat on their own. The teacher insists on finishing the unit.

10. The teacher has given homework of 10 pages for the weekend. There are 24 students in her class. On Monday, in the first lesson of the day, she asks them to take their homework out and she checks every page of the homework. The students are bored of waiting for teacher’s check. Then, the teacher tells the students that they will check the answers for every question. She spends the whole 2-hour lesson on Monday.

Please discuss how you would deal with the student’s disruptive behavior in the anecdotes below

Situation A: ‘I was teaching English to first grade primary school students… The lesson was the last lesson of the week and the students were involved with a coloring activity with some paper and crayons. One of the students started throwing his crayons to the student sitting next to him one by one. The other boy was not responding, although he was trying to protect his face with his arm. I approached the trouble maker and took his paper and the rest of his crayons saying: ‘If you don’t use them for coloring, I’ll have the crayons’. He started shouting at me but I did not care. He approached to the teacher’s desk, and hit the coloring papers on it. The papers were all over the desk and the floor. He ran singing: ‘you can’t catch me!’ in Turkish. The rest of the class was in dead silence waiting to see what would happen.”

Situation B: ‘I was teaching English to fifth grade primary school students… I was teaching a lesson on the types of animals, including mammals, reptiles, fish, birds, and arachnids. The names of these five animal types were written on the board, and I asked students to give examples for each type of animal for a review. After a couple of examples, one of the students stood up, came to the board, and wrote the name of one of the other students as an example for ‘reptiles’. The whole class went crazy; they were laughing and praising the boy for doing such a funny thing, while teasing the one whose name was on the board’.

Read through the examples of troublesome student behaviors in the classroom listed below

What do you think about the level of severity attached to each of them? Identify 5 you believe to be minor and 5 that are at the top of your severity scale. Then compare your answers with a peer.

1. Having authority challenged.

2. Talking out of turn.

3. Making statements that seemingly have.

4. Coming late to class.

5. Leaving early with no notification.

6. Backpack shuffle.

7. Eating in the classroom.

8. Doing homework for other classes.

9. Reading a book.

10. Sleeping during class.

11. Shouting at others.

12. Swearing.

13. Name calling, making racist, sexist, homophobic, nothing to do with topic etc. remarks about others.

14. Talking about students behind their backs.

15. Consumer mentality: I paid for this; thus I want …

16. Coming to class unprepared.

17. Constantly phoning office or home.

18. Cheating.

19. Sexual hits & sexual harassment.

20. Aggressive and hostile verbal attacks.

Please discuss the solutions below and decide if they are acceptable or unacceptable:

I. The teacher throws chalk/rubber/ pen/pencil/ book to the student(s) who has an unacceptable behavior in class.

II. The teacher ignores the cell phones, the late comers and/or the missing coursebooks.

III.  The teacher insults, humiliates and/or swears at the students.

IV. The teacher sends the student to the principle/ vice-principle/discipline committee and/or calls the parents.

V. The teacher asks another student or a group of students to decide on what to do and/or lets them take action.

VI. The teacher uses physical punishment such as slapping.

4.4. Assessing Young Learners

Issues to consider while assessing young learners.

Age: Motor, language, conceptual and social development

Content of language learning: skills, vocabulary, language use at discourse level Methods of teaching: games, songs, stories to carry language content and practice. Aims of language learning: social, cross-cultural and language learning aims Learning theories: ZPD, social interaction.

The social realities of assessment. England: the government introduced a national curriculum and assessment at ages 7, 11 and 14 with baseline assessment at the age of 5, school entry.

Parents and teachers began to protest at the stress being felt by seven year old children and ask for a review of assessment procedures.

Malaysia: 6-year grammar exam. From age 7, pupils are tested every month every term, every year. The marks are used in some schools to place children in different groups within a class. Global scale: a new test for young learners developed by UCLES. 150,000 students were expected to take the exam in 2000.

Although the test assesses a child progress rather than awarding a pass/fail, parents often want to know whether their child has passed.

Testing has become a multimillion-dollar global business in which the need for internationally recognized certification of language proficiency works with their learners’ or their parents’ understandable demands to see proof of the outcomes of their struggle to learn and the money they have invested in it.

Wash-back effects of testing

Negative. Stress is placed on children by the demands of assessment

Individual children’s learning needs are downgraded in the push to cover the syllabus or course book before the next assessment.

Classroom activity is restricted to test preparation

Educational change is limited by the power of the assessment machinery

Positive. Attention to neglected aspects of learning (i.e.: oral language)

The effectiveness of policy, methodology, instruction, and materials can be seen.

Classroom realities. By far the most frequently used method of assessment is paper and pencil test; testing single items of vocabulary and grammar through single sentences.

Very few of the tests that were reported focused on spontaneous speaking, it seems that what was assessed was what was relatively easy to assess.

In schools and classrooms, because it is much more difficult to devise and mark oral assessments fairly, most assessment is still carried out on paper.

Principles for assessing children’s language learning. Assessment should be seen from a learning-centered perspective.

Assessment should support learning and teaching (the process and outcomes of assessment can motivate learners; an assessment activity can be a language use model, assessment activity and feedback from it can support further learning, the outcomes of assessment can help teachers plan more effective lessons and can inform the evaluation and improvement of courses and programs).

Assessment is more than testing: The test results do not reflect the big picture.

Assessment should be congruent (in harmony) with learning; interactional rather than isolated.

Children & parents should understand assessment issues: Parents need to know what teachers are doing and why.

Key Concepts in Assessment

Assessment – testing ‑ evaluation: Evaluation is the process of systematically collecting information in order to make judgments.

Formative (on-going) and Summative (end result) assessment.

Diagnostic (how much can be done for further learning) tests and achievement (what can a learner do) tests.

Strategic feedback: advice on what to do to improve the performance.

Thus, the reasons for starting with the teaching of English in primary schools are many. The aims of teaching English in Primary School correspondingly are to raise the learners’ interest in the learning of English and to keep alive that interest by motivating activities and the experience of success with the learning of the target language. They call for the development of receptive and productive skills, which correspond to the traditional four basic skills: listening (comprehension) – speaking – reading – writing. Reading and writing have a mainly supportive function in this context. Parallel to the acquisition of lexical and grammatical knowledge, which is a declarative knowledge, teachers should promote effective language learning strategies. That requires classroom activities which actively involve the learners in their own learning processes and make them experience implicitly what it needs to learn a second language. Young learners only in rare cases profit from explicit explanations of rules of grammar.

The essential conditions for learning English in primary schools are the same as for other types of second language learning: exposure – use – motivation. Language use presupposes language models and plenty of opportunity to actively use the target language in communicative exchanges. The most important model for the use of the target language is the teacher.

A LIST OF USED AND RECOMMENDED LITERATURE

Bruner J. In Search of Mind. Essays in Autobiorgraphy [Text] / Jerome S. Bruner New York: Harper & Row. – 1983.

Cameron, L. Teaching Languages to Young Learners [Text] / L. Cameron. ‑ Cambridge University Press, 2001.

English Teaching Forum [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum-journal.html.

Harmer, J. The practice of English language Teaching [Text] / Jeremy Harmer.‑ Pearson Education Ltd, 2007.

Lenneberg E. The Capacity of Language Acquisition [Text] / Eric Lenneberg. – Oxford Univ. Press, 1960/

Linse, T. C. (2005). Practical English Language Teaching [Text] / T. C. Linse. ‑ Young Learners. McGraw Hill: NY. Shaaban, K., 2005.

Mcllvain, A. Teaching English to very young learners: English Adventure [Electronic resource]. / Audrey Mcllvain. – Pearson Longman Disney. – Access mode: www.english-adventure.net.

N’Namdi, K. A. Guide to Teaching Reading at the Primary School Level [Text] / Kemba A. N’Namdi. – UNESCO, 2005.

CONTENTS

Introduction………………………………………………………………….............3

1. General Problems of Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL)………….3

1.1. Concepts of foreign language teaching to young learners…………………..3

1.2. Variety of methods and strategies in TEYL…………………………...........5

1.3. Characteristics of Yung Learners…………………………………………...6

2. Teaching Various Aspects of Language in Primary School……………………7

2.1. Teaching Vocabulary to Young Learners……………………………...........7

2.2. Teaching Grammar in Primary classes ….…………………………..…….10

2.3. Teaching pronunciation in YL classes ……………………………………12

3. Teaching Communicative Skills in Primary classroom.………………………13

3.1. Listening in young learner classes…………………………………………13

3.2. Speaking in Primary School……………………………………………….16

3.3. Learning the Literacy Skills. Important Concepts for Teaching

Reading and Writing in Young Learner Classes…………………………..17

3.4. Strategies in teaching reading……………………………………...………20

3.5. Strategies in teaching writing………………………………………...........22

4. Education Process and its Organization in Primary School…………………..23

4.1. Lesson Planning. Thematic Syllabus for YL………………………………23

4.2. Lesson Planning for Primary English Teaching……………………...........24

4.3. Classroom Management in Young Learner Classes……………………….27

4.4. Assessing Young Learners…………………………………………...........30

A list of used and recommended literature……………………………………….32

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