Careful consideration must be given to teaching English to young learners. It cannot be done without thorough planning and preparation. In fact, teaching young learners is different from teaching adults as young learners are socially, emotionally, intellectually, and physically different from adults. In addition, children are more enthusiastic and lively than adults; however, they may lose interest very quickly and they are not motivated on tasks they find difficult. Surely, these differences will affect the learning and teaching process. It is important for a teacher to describe the learners’ nature, habitual, and preferred way of absorbing, processing, and retaining the new information and skills. You can use this text as a good sample of exemplification topics.
The successful learning environment is best achieved when a teacher creates a safe, non-threatening environment, within which the learners can play with language. Piaget stated that children are active learners and they are able to understand things that surround them and solve the problems presented by the environment. Thus, teachers may ask their students to play games and involve them in the group work. However, Vygotsky claimed that children learn through social interaction. Therefore, they need support from their peers and adults in order to learn and be motivated. It is advisable for children to work in collaborative groups. Such a kind of environment would make them feel safe and secure. Subsequently, children will be more productive in terms of language.
Moreover, children have different bits of intelligence compared to adults; this intelligence is linguistic, logical, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal nature. Accordingly, children have different ways of dealing with a language. A visual learner can learn best through pictures, a kinesthetic learner can learn best by performing tasks, and so on. Thus, all children can learn in their own way, and a teacher should consider different learning styles. Additionally, Bruner pointed out that children learn more effectively if they are supported by adults. This kind of support can be given through interaction, explanation, and modeling.
Children’s attention span is usually short. Thus, the teachers should vary their techniques and activities to break the boredom. Children will be engaged in the learning process if it is meaningful to them. Therefore, the teacher's techniques and activities should be adjusted to the learners' interests, wants and needs. The students can be motivated to learn through using stories, songs and role-plays. I think that games would be essential in teaching due to the fact that young learners enjoy learning through play. Though those tasks and activities should not be too demanding, and they must be achievable. The expert teachers are more skillful in monitoring students’ problems and assessing their level of understanding of the progress. What is more, they provide much more relevant and useful feedback.
As for the variety of teaching procedures and techniques, the teachers should adopt the eclectic approach in their classrooms. The eclectic approach is a framework involving procedures and techniques drawn from the various methods. Young learners will also respond well to praise and encouragement. It is advisable to provide good exposure to the target language in order to encourage them to practice using the language. However, other characteristics such as intelligence, aptitude, motivation, and the age at which the learning process begins, are also important for enhancing learning capabilities.
When children learn the English language, four skills are needed for complete communication: reading, listening, writing, and speaking. I think that listening should be taught first. Since recognition is easier than production, pupils should start with listening comprehension before proceeding to write or speak. Thus, children master their first and second languages by listening to everything that surrounds them. Thereafter, they try to repeat and start to speak. After a while, they can learn how to write and read. However, when teaching foreign languages, four language skills must be taught in an integrated way.
Songs, chants, and storytelling can be used by the teachers in order to develop children’s listening skills. Furthermore, a teacher can offer children some interesting activities, for example, listen and repeat, listen and identify, etc. Later on, the teachers are advised to give some listening practices by using the recording. As for teaching speaking, a teacher can be a good example by means of the target language. The students can be given a task to describe something around them.
Young learners need a lot of time to develop their writing and reading skills. Writing is considered to be a complicated skill. It starts with drafting, editing, pre-writing, and writing. Thus, a lot of practice is needed to develop this skill. For example, a teacher can ask students to distinguish and rewrite some words and phrases. If they can do it, they may be asked to do writing games. Reading is a development process, which goes through several stages starting from the words and phrases to advanced reading and communication practice. Thus, young learners can start from such activities as reading aloud and drawing.
In conclusion, to maintain the successful teaching of English in primary schools, it is essential for the teacher to understand the characteristics, needs, and interests of young learners. This will help teachers in designing an effective lesson and in making sure that learners are fully engaged in the learning process. The primary teacher should not only understand the characteristics of young learners but also recognize the qualifications as a primary teacher. Thus, it is very important for teachers to have continuous professional development. Working this way, teachers will be aware of the new researches on how pupils learn, modern technology facilities for the classroom, new additional resources, and so on.