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.