Diversity in Language Development of Young Learner

Do you find that your students have the differences in their language development? How does the language develop from one child to other children?  These questions refers to both nature and nurture factors to influence young learners’ language development. Nature means that language is a natural biological process whereas nurture is that language instead is a process that depends on the stimulation offered by the environment.
In nature factors, commonly children shows a remarkable natural ability to learn a language. For instance, all children will exhibit the following language behaviors during the first two years of life:

1. Babbling at about 3 to 6 months of age; 
2. Uttering the first words and using single words at about 10 to 13 months of age—especially  those that refer to animals, body parts, and toys (Bornstein et al., 2004); 
3. Combining nouns with verbs to produce two-word speech at approximately 18 to 24 months of age.

According to Bloom (1998), children quickly grow to learn how to produce complete sentences between 2 and 3 years of age and into the elementary school years.  Young learner also  develop the ability to produce sentences of increasing complexity to effectively communicate with others and also slowly develop meta-linguistic awareness, the knowledge of language that allows children to think about their language (Berko Gleason, 2005). For example, during elementary school, children will start becoming aware of when sentences are grammatically correct or not (Bowey, 1986).
In nature factor, the environment plays important roles in language development of young learner. For example, mothers who teach letters to their babies, talk out loud to them, and read books to them regularly and consistently are much more likely to have children with well-developed vocabularies. When parents are consumed by financial or emotional pressures, their children will be less to understand the vocabularies.  The teacher also gives a big influence to young learners’ language because the students will copy and be stimulated by using the teacher’s language.
Therefore if your students are differences in producing the language, you have to try to provide the activities that cover all diversity. It takes time I think to plan the lesson, however, the students will together smile and have a fun in your class.

References
Berko Gleason, J. (2005). The development of language (6th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Bloom, B. (1998). Language acquisition in its developmental context. In W. Damon (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (pp. 309–370) (5th ed., Vol. 2). New York: Wiley
Bornstein, M. H., Cote, L. R., Maital, S., Painter, K., Sung-Yun, P., Pascual, L., Pecheux, M. G., Ruel, J., Venuti, P., & Vyt, A. (2004). Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and American English. Child Development, 75, 1115–1140
Bowey, J. (1986). Syntactic awareness and verbal performance from preschool to fifth grade. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 15, 285–308.

See also previous post
The Role of Teacher Talk for Young Learner in The Classroom

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The Role of Teacher Talk for Young Learner in The Classroom

A teacher has been defined differently by many scholars. However, all of them argue that a teacher refers to the teaching profession. In Merriam Webster Dictionary (2016), teacher is a person whose job is to teach students about certain subjects. A teacher also defines as an expert who is capable of imparting knowledge that will help learners to build, identify and acquire skills that will be used to face the challenges in life. Therefore, in the young learners’ classes,  the teacher also provides to the learners knowledge, skills and values that enhance development. 

In the concept of learning and teaching process, learning is related to students who acquire or get knowledge of a subject or a skill through study, experience or instruction. Moreover, teaching refers to showing or helping students to do something, giving instruction, guiding in the study, providing with knowledge, and causing to know or understand.
The role of the teachers is related to the use of  teacher talk in the classroom. Teacher talk is the kind of language expressed by the teacher in the classroom for giving explanation or instruction. For this term, Richards (1992: 471) stated that the variety of language sometimes is used by teachers when they are in the process of teaching. In trying to communicate with learners, teachers often simplify their speech, giving it many of the characteristics of foreigner talk and other simplified styles of speech addressed to language learners.
From the definitions, teacher talk is  regarded as a special communicative activity. Its goal is to communicate with students and develops students’ foreign language proficiency. It means that teachers adopt the target language to promote their communication with learners. In this way, learners practice the language by responding to what their teacher says.
In young learners classroom,  the teachers can use some activities related to the role of teacher talk in the classroom.
1. Repeating the word or vocabularies
2. Asking young learner to share the idea based on young question
3. Doing a project based on your instruction
4. Translating  vocabularies
5. Dialouging teaching  material and instructions
6. Retelling the story
References
Merriam Webster Dictionary (2016)
Richards, J. C. (1992). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

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Teaching Strategy to Young learners: See-Think-Wonder

Designing good teaching strategies for teachers is important to engage young learners in learning process. It can make that young learners will become more enjoyable and fun in obtaining new knowledge. One of the strategies to make the students interest and creative in exploring their ideas is see think and wonder.  See is for “ What do you see”. Think is for “what do you think is going on”. Wonder is for “what does it make you wonder?”
Procedures

1. Show the object to young learners. 
2. After showing the picture,  the teachers ask the student to apply  see-think-wonder strategies 
3. See:  young learner will see the object and write all things that they see on the object. You can do this activities about 10 minutes. 
4. Wonder:  young learner will try to think about the object “ what do you think is going on”
5. Wonder: the teacher will ask young learners to make questions about the objects, and young    learner will write all the questions that they have.  

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Lesson Plan: Teaching Conditional Sentence Type 1 to Grade 6

Conditional sentence is divided into three types. They are  type I, II and III. Here, we focus on conditional type I. Conditional sentence type 1 is often called the “real” conditional because it is used for real or possible situations.

Form

If Simple Present, Simple Future

The example of type I

 “If I am adult, I will be a doctor”

Grade    : 6

Duration: 2 x 40 minutes

Learning  objective

1.  Write  conditional sentence in a sentence
2. Practice the use of conditional sentence in conversation

Material : conditional sentence

Activities

Starting activities (20 minutes)

• A teacher greets the students and asks the students to pray together
• The teacher checks attendance list
• The teacher asks the students to write their dream in a piece of paper
• The teacher asks question  about the material related to a dream that they write
• The students will try to answer and guess what they have already understood
• The teacher tells the students what they are going to study and explain the goal of learning numbers
• The teacher uses teaching strategy:  K-W-L to help students make active their  prior knowledge

Running activities (50 minutes)

Exploration activities

•  The teacher explain about conditional sentence by showing the picture or video 
• The students will listen  a song “smile” by  Charlie Chaplin and “time after time” by   Cyndi Lauper) and they will answer the question 
• They will identify  and underline conditional sentence in the sentence.

2.      Elaboration

•  The students discuss their answer  together
•  The students will make a conditional sentence from the dream that they write in the beginning of the classroom
• The students will play “catch the ball”

3.      Confirmation       

•  The teacher will ask the students about the material that the students do not understand
• The teacher gives feedback about the students’ work

Closing activities

•         The teacher concludes the lesson
•         The teacher closes the meeting and ask one of the students to lead pray

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Teaching Strategy to Young learner: K-W-L Chart

Have you ever used this strategy in your class? this strategy is very helpful for linking the previous knowledge and new material. The  strategy is employed to help  young learners organize information that they obtain in the beginning activity, running activity and closing activity in the classroom. K means “what do you know about the subject”. W means  “what do you want to know about the subject”. Then, L means “what did you learned”  

What are you going to do K-W-L chart. Here is some procedures that you can apply.

1.       Write K-W-L chart in whiteboard or make it with cartoon paper. You can design it beautifully and put it as a poster in the classroom. You can also give handout. It depends on your situation and your students’ needs. However, I suggest to make a poster because young learners like colorful theme.

2.       Sticky paper 1. Start the class with showing object or picture related to learning material. give them three colorful sticky paper in their table. Ask them to write  “what do they know the object or the picture”. Young learners will try recall their memory about the object. This activity will help make active their prior knowledge and organize information.  

3.       Sticky paper 2.  Continued by writing “what do you want to know about the subject”. young learners will write some questions about the object. This activity will make young learners be more creative thinker and explore the subject more deeply. Then ask them to stick the paper 1 and 2 in K and W chart

4.       Sticky paper 3. The objective of lesson is  that the students comprehend the teaching material taught. In the last sticky paper, young learners will write down “what did they learn”. this activity is applied as conclusion time. This helps teachers know that the young learners understand or not about lesson or answer all questions from young learners.  Moreover, you can also asks them to read what they have already written down in their paper.

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Lesson Plan: Teaching numbers to Young Learners

Numbers are divided into two kinds they are cardinal number and ordinal number. In this section, lesson plan that I will explain  is cardinal number. Cardinal number includes one, two, three, four, etc. the numbers that you can use depends on your students’ understanding.

Grade              : 1

Duration          : 2 x 40 minutes

Learning objective

1.   Mention the numbers
2. Draw the numbers
3.  List the number

Material           : Numbers 1-10

Activities        

A.    Starting activities (15 minutes)

1.    .  A teacher greets the students and asks the students to pray together
2.     . The teacher checks attendance list
3.     The teacher shows the pictures of numbers and asks the students about the picture
4.    . The students will try to answer and guess what they have already understood
5.      The teacher tells the students what they are going to study and explain the goal of learning numbers

B.     Running activities (55 minutes)

Exploration activities

1.      The teacher shows the video about the numbers (singing the number)

2.      After showing the teacher ask the students to find the number in the classroom (the teacher have already put the numbers in the classroom

3.      After finding the number, the students sits on their seat

Elaboration activities

1.      The students mention the number that they find

2.      The students list numbers with their pairs and discuss the number on the cartoon paper

3.      After listing the number, the students draw numbers on lined paper

4.      The students report their discussion and show their work

Confirmation activities

1.      The teacher gives a change for students to explain their work and ask questions about what they do not understand

2.      The teacher mentions the number together with her/his students

3.      The teacher lists the numbers and singing the number together with the students

C.    Closing activities (10 minutes)

1.      The teacher concludes the lesson

2.      The teacher closes the meeting and ask one of the students to lead pray

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10 Techniques in Teaching English to Young Learners

Naturally, various methods employ various techniques. A technique is the implementation of a method and it is also defined as every single activity that derives from a procedure. According to Richards and Rodgers (1986), the position of a technique is at the implementation phase and it is often called procedure while approach and method are at the level of design.

 Because children have short attention in their focus on learning a certain subject, the teachers should design their learning and teaching to be more enjoyable and fun. Scott &Ytreberg (1990) suggested the activities that were useful for children in the classroom. They are given below:

1.      Listen and do activities

Communication is two ways, and it can be easily understood by looking at the learners whether they have received the massages or not. In most classrooms, language is a type of “listen and do” activities, therefore teachers should make use of this from the moment they start lessons by giving genuine instruction.

2.      Moving about

Activities like moving about let the teachers know whether learners are able to understand the instructions by listening or not. Classroom vocabulary, movement word, counting,or spelling can be done using activities. Children enjoy role-playing, they can role-play as an ‘instructor’ which will enhance speaking.

3.      Mime stories

Mime stories are also interesting for young learners. Here teacher tells a story and the learners and teacher do the actions. It is again providing physical movement.

4.      Drawing

“Listen and draw” is a favorite type of listening activity in almost all classes, but drawing takes time, we need to keep the picture simple. In this activity the teacher or one of the learners tells the others to draw.

5.      Questionnaires

Questionnaire type of exercise involves a little bit of writing or filling in of numbers, which are very useful for language exercise.

6.      Listening for information

Listening for information is really an umbrella heading which covers a very wide range of listening activities. However, we are taking it to mean listening for detail, for specific information.

7.      Listen and color

Children love coloring pictures and this can easily be a listening activity. Instead of letting children to simply color the picture teachers can make it into a language activity.

8.      Listen and repeat activities

(Rhymes, songs) ‘Listen and repeat’ exercises are great fun and give the children a chance to get a feel for the language: the sounds, the stress and rhyme and the intonation. When they are done in combination with movements or with objects or pictures, it helps learners to establish a link between words and meaning.

9.      Creating stories

Making up stories with the learners at all stages helps them to put their thoughts into words. And also this gives a real feeling of a shared story and one cannot predict how it is going to end but it does, usually rather unconventionally.

10.  Reading stories

The more young learners hear the better they will be able to speak. Teachers can read aloud a book instead of telling a story. Learners like to have their favorite stories repeated, and they will very often be able to tell you the story word for word without changing the word.

References

Richards, J. C. and Rodgers, T.S. (1986/2001): Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching: A Description and Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Scott, A., & Ytreberg, L. 1990. Teaching English to Children, London New York: Longman.

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How to Design Oral Presentation for Sixth Grader

This was my students' activities in the classroom when they had the first formative of English. They designed their own brochure and present it in front of the classroom

Here the story

In week 8^th, grade 6 students had the first formative of English. The test was not written test; however, it was oral presentation. Before doing the presentation, we had prepared our presentation for a week. Our preparation was making a brochure about our experience we ever did. It was related to simple past material. Simple past is used to indicate those actions which began in the past time and also got over in the past time

In our brochure, we should decide the tittle, draw a cover and a map, make outline, write our story, and add our family photograph. It was fun because we designed it by ourselves as beautiful as we could.

Not only we made it the brochure and presented in front of the classroom, but also we had rules like oral presentation rubric including using complete sentences, the way we spoke, volume, posture/Gesture and eye contact, and content; and brochure rubric such as written presentation and visual appeal that we should follow to get excellent score.

During the presentation time, we should carefully listen to other presentations by writing our friends’ topics and giving comment to friend’s presentation. We really tried our best and enjoyed doing our test. Then, we hope that we could achieve a good result.  

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