Helpful Websites for Listening Practice

In this post, I will review https://elllo.org/. This website really helps me when I teach listening for my students. Elllo.org focusses on listening practice for beginner, intermediate, and advanced lessons.  ELLLO has over 3,000 free listening lessons for all levels! Most lessons have audio or video, a transcript, vocab support and interactive quizzes.

This websites contains of Audio lesson, Video Lessons, Levels, and search. 

1. Audio lesson offers a collection of over 1500 free listening lessons from elllo over the last 15 years. These English listening lessons are a great way to hear real, natural English! Most listening lessons are between 3 and 5 minutes. Each lesson comes with a script, audio, a quiz and audio support. 
2. Video lessons are firstly English speakers from around the world answer a basic question, secondly all videos come with a script and quiz, and last, most videos are less than 60 seconds long.
3. Levels. Teachers and students can find lessons based on level. The lessons are listed by difficulty in grammar and vocabulary.
4. Search. You can find listening practice that you want based on your topic, country, level, and Media 

I hope that Elllo.org can help you to find listening practice based on your students lessons 

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Effective Strategies to Teach English to Young Learners

Every teacher has different ways to teach English to her/his class. Before we teach students, we have to know who we teach and what are their characteristics in learning language. Therefore, we will provide learning design in our class. Here some considerations which you should know about your students

1. Children are often enthusiastic and lively as learners
2. The children are lose interest more quickly and are less able to keep themselves motivate don task they find difficult 
3. Children use their new language in conversation (talking to someone) without focusing on grammar 
4. Adults tend to be worry of using foreign language because they think that the language they use is correct or not based on grammar or structure they learn. 
5. Children often seem less embarrassed than adults at talking in a new language, and their lack of inhibition seems to help them to get a more native-like accent.

After we know students, we start to design teaching strategies. Wulandari, Ratminingsih, and Putu Ramendra (2020) found 5 strategies in teaching English for young learners

• Listen and Repeat

These strategies focuses on enriching young learners vocabulary. Young leaners will imitate the word which they listen and repeat the word. This activity is aimed to help students memorize the vocabularies easily.

• Listen and do 

The teachers will give instruction to students. The instruction contains of a few sentence and ask young learners to do what the teacher say.

• Question and Answer 

The teachers will ask a question and the students answer the question. Young learners can write in a book and whiteboard, and directly answer the questions. 

• In Pair

The teacher asks young learners to make groups in pair.  Afterwards, the teacher gives several tasks related to pair activity.  

• Cooperative Learning 

This strategy is group strategy. Young learners will try learn a new vocabulary in a group. They will try to learn it in a community and When you learn something together, you'll likely spend more time with each other, understand different perspectives and accommodate different work styles. It's an effective strategy for team building and collaboration

• Games 

Every young leaner like studying through games. They will enjoy, relax classroom, and play while studying. 

According to lestari, Asrori, and Sulistyawati (unkown year), They stated some strategies to teach English to young learners.

1. Icebreaking
2. Recalling Memory 
3. Brainstorming
4. Discussion 
5. Game
6. Listen and Read 
7. Listen and Match 
8. Draw and Write
9. Write Paragraph
10. Filling the blank
11. Vocabulary Writing 
12. Concluding Material
13. Police of English 
14. Reading Time
15. English Camp 
16. Assembly 

Based on my teaching experiences, I have some strategies to build young learners understanding the material taught.

1. Identifying Students' learning styles
2. Visible Thinking Routines (VTR)
3. Differentiated instructions 
4. Ice Breaking and games 

References 

Journal of Educational Research and Evaluation  Volume 4, Number 3, Tahun 2020, pp. 235-241;

Strategies Implemented in Teaching English for Young Learners in Primary School by Ni Luh Putu Titin Wulandari, Ni Made Ratminingsih, and D. P. Ramendra (2020)

Journal of The English Teaching Strategies for Young Learners in An International Primary School in Surakarta by Ria Puji Lestari, Muhammad Asrori, Hefy Sulistyawati

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Differentiated instruction for young learners (6-12 years old)

According to Tomlinson, Differentiation is an organized yet flexible way of proactively adjusting teaching and learning to meet kids where they are and help them to achieve maximum growth as learners.

Differentiated instruction is adapting instruction and assessment in response to differing interest, learning preferences and readiness in order to promote growth in learning.

It is not individualized instruction; it is responding to varying student strength and needs by providing a balance of modelled, shared, guided and independent instructional strategies.

When we need respond to student need, we differentiate, to some extent, some of time, for optimal success, we need to be aware of the decisions that we make and take deliberate action to meet the needs of all learners. Ultimately, our aim is to shape the learning experience so that it is appropriate to the learning preferences, interest and or readiness of each students.

Why the teachers should differentiate their instruction in the classroom?

1. To help all students learnt
2. To increase students motivation and achievement
3. To connect with adolescent learners
4. To help  adolescent become independent learners
5. To increase teacher satisfaction and efficacy

Before we differentiated instruction, teachers and students work together to know students’ readiness, learning preferences, and students interest so students come to know themselves better. Students who have clearer understanding of themselves are prepared to make more informed choices when differentiated options are available. Students who know themselves as learners are better to advocate for their learning need

Students readiness

Readiness is a student’s proximity to the learning goals at a specific point in time (Tomlinson, 2014); it is where the student is relative to where the learning goals say the student should be.

There are several sources that teachers can use to gauge student readiness:

a.      Classroom-based informative assessments.

b.      Results from standardized assessments.

c.       Prior performance.

d.      Other student characteristics.

Pre-assessment: Gauging Readiness before Instruction

Pre-assessment is the process of gathering evidence of students’ readiness and interests prior to beginning a unit or series of related lessons and then using that evidence to plan instruction that will better meet learners’ needs (Doubet & Hockett, 2015). Pre-assessment gives teachers both a big picture view of where a group of students is relative to goals as well as insights about individual student’s thinking, skills, and preferences.

Pre-Assessment Strategy Examples

·         KWL

·         Agree or Disagree

·         Coming Soon

·         Rank It

·         Performance-Based Task

 Formative Assessment: Gauging Readiness during Instruction

Formative assessment (sometimes called ongoing assessment) is the ongoing process of taking regular and varied snapshots of students’ learning during or after a lesson (or series of lessons) to inform next steps in instructional planning (Doubet & Hockett, 2015).

Formative Assessment Strategy Examples

·         Frayer Models

·         Entry/Exit Tickets

·         Quick Quizzes/Check-Ups

·         White boards

·         Sticky notes

·         Spotlight method

·         Concept sort

·         Classroom  Response Systems and online tools

·         Face time

·         Hand signal

Students' interest 

Interest refers to the passions, kinships, and affinities that can motivate a student to learn (Tomlinson, 2014). In a differentiated classroom, leveraging students’ interests is one secret to making learning both more cognitively and affectively engaging and more joyful.

Interest strategy

·         Jigsaw

·         RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, and Topic)

·         Choice Grid

·         Learning Menu    

Students' learning Profile 

A learning profile refers to how students seem learn to best, how they process what they need to learn, or how they think about, remember, and prefer to use what they learn (Tomlinson & Sousa, 2011). Learning profile is best thought of as a set of preferences, not as inherent characteristics or traits of a student.

·         Learning style

·         Intelligence preference

·         Culture-and gender-influenced preference:

To analyze students learning style, I used helpful website for my grade 6 students. The students will answer some question and we will know their learning style. However, you have to make sure they answer based on their personal preferences

You can use this website personalitymax.com 

Learning profile strategy

·         Entry points

·         Tri-mind example

·         Thinking caps

·         Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic-Tactile (VAK)

·         Multiple intelligence

 

Portions derived from the following sources:

Tomlinson C.A. (2014). The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners. (2nd ed). Alexan dria, VA: ASCD.

Doubet, K.J., & Hockett, J.A. (2017). Differentiation in Elementary Schools: Strategies to Engage and Equip All Learners. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Tomlinson, C.A., & Sousa, D. (2011). Differentiation and the Brain: How Neuroscience Supports the Learner-Friendly Classroom. Solution Tree.

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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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Characteristics of Teacher for young learners

A teacher is related to a person who delivers educational program, asses student participation and provides consistent and substantial leadership to educational program in order to help students to acquire knowledge, competences, and values. Because of the complexity of teaching and individual variation among students especially young learner, to become a teacher, someone should have some characteristics so that their teaching process can be effective and positively contribute to children’s’ future. Here are some characteristics to be effective teacher according to Moreno (2011).  
1. Professional knowledge and skills.
Effective teachers have a good command of their subject matter and teaching skills. They know when they use the instructional strategies and method to support their teaching process in managing classroom, and planning learning and teaching goal. They are aware that not all methods can fix for all the subject or material and classroom condition. In addition, they understand how to motivate students and how to communicate and work effectively with those of varying skill levels and culturally diverse background. Effective teachers also employ appropriate levels of technology in the classroom.

• Subject-matter competence. Having a thoughtful, flexible, conceptual understanding of subject matter is indispensable for being an effective teacher. Of course, knowledge of subject matter includes more than just facts, terms, and general concept. It also includes knowledge about organizing ideas, connecting among ideas, ways of thinking and arguing, pattern of change within discipline.
•  Instructional strategies. There are two approaches to characterize how the teachers teach: constructivist and direct instruction. The constructivist approach is a learner-centered approach that emphasizes the importance of individual actively constructing their knowledge and understanding with guidance form the teacher. By contrast, the direct instruction approach is a structured, teacher-centered approach characterized by teacher direction and control, high teacher expectations for students’ progress, maximum time spent by students’ academic tasks, and efforts by the teacher to keep negative affect to a minimum. 
• Thinking skill. Effective teacher model and communicate good thinking skills, especially thinking skill, which involves thinking reflectively and productively and evaluating the evidence. It also means being open-minded and curious on the one hand, yet being careful to avoid key mistakes in interpretation on the other. Getting young learner to think critically is not easy, so a teacher need to have thinking skill in order that students are not to be passive learner in the classroom
• Goal setting and instructional planning.The teacher should set high goals for their teaching and organize plans for reaching goals (Anderman & Dawson, 2011). Good planning requires consideration of kinds of information, demonstration, models, inquiry opportunities, discussion, and practice learner need over time to understand particular concepts and develop particular skills. 
• Developmentally appropriate teaching practice. Competent teachers have a good understanding of children’s development and know how to create instruction materials appropriate for their developmental levels or their age so the teachers can know what their students need in teaching and learning process. 
• Classroom management skills. An important aspect of being an effective teacher is keeping the class as whole working together and oriented toward classroom task in which learning can occur.
• Motivation skills. Effective teachers have a good strategies for helping students become self-motivated and take responsibility for their learning (Anderman & Dawson, 2011). Young learners are motivated when they can make choices in line with their interests. Effective teachers give them the opportunity to think creatively and deeply about projects.
• Communication skill. Effective teachers use good communication skill when they talk “with” rather than “to” students, parents administrators, and others; keep criticism at a minimum; and have an assertive rather than aggressive, manipulative, and passive communication style. Effective teachers work to improve students’ communication skills as well. 
• Paying more than lip service to individual variation. In the classroom, the students have diverse characteristic so they need much though and effort to teach. Differented instruction addresses this challenge by recognizing individual variations in students’ knowledge readiness, interest, and other characteristic. It makes a teacher pay attention to each their learners in taking every subject and how to solve classroom problems. 
• Working effectively with students from culturally diverse background. Effective teachers must be knowledgeable and understandable about young learners from different cultural backgrounds and sensitive to their needs because they will guide the learners in thinking critically about cultural and ethnic issues.  
• Assessment knowledge skills. Competent teachers also have a good assessment knowledge and skills. The teachers will need to decide what type of assessments you want to use document your students’ performance after instruction.
• Technological skill.Technology itself does not necessarily improve students’ ability to learn, but it can support learning (Lever-Duffy & McDonald. 2011). Nowadays, teacher should be able to operate the computer or other technology tools. This will help them to make their teaching more joyful and interesting.  Young learner likes visual realia, video, and colorful material and it will not make them boring in your classroom.

2.    Commitment, motivation, and caring
Being effective teacher requires commitment, motivation, and caring, qualities that include have a good attitude. Teachers are sometimes easy to get frustrated or to get into a rut and develop negative attitude. Commitment and motivation help get effective teachers through the tough moments of teaching so that you will be aware with your students or care with what they need.
Therefore the better teacher you become, the more rewarding your work will be, and the more respect and success you achieve in the eyes of your students, the better you will feel about your commitment to teaching.
See the next post about the Challenges in Teaching English for Young Learner and The Role of Teacher Talk for Young Learner in The Classroom 
Reference
Anderman, E. M., & Dawson, H. (2011). Learning and motivation. In P. A. Alexander & R. E. Mayer (Eds.), Handbook of research on learning and instruction . New York: Routledge.
Lever-Duffy, J., McDonald, J., & Mizell, A. (2003). Teaching and learning with technology. Boston:  Allyn & Bacon.
Moreno, R. (2010). Educational Psychology. The United State of America: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Rewarding Young Learners

Who doesn't like if somebody give reward or appreciation word? Moreover if the reward are given to children, they will naturally be very happy to accept it. As a teacher, Reward is also called teachers’ reinforcement. Teachers’ reinforcement is one of the behavioral approaches to learning based on operant conditioning (also called instrumental conditioning) by B.F. Skinner. According to B. F. Skinner (1938), operant conditioning is a form of learning in which the consequences of behavior, rewards or reinforcement, produce changes in the probability that the behavior will occur. Reinforcement is divided into two kinds, positive and negative reinforcement. In positive reinforcement, the frequency of a response increases because it is followed by rewarding stimulus whereas in negative reinforcement, the frequency of response increases when it is followed by removal of an aversive stimulus. However, rewarding is very beneficial applied by teacher in the classroom in order to increase students’ motivation.

Motivation is a crucial aspect of teaching and learning process. In fact, young learners with higher motivation in learning will achieve the best results in their performances. Motivation to learn can be defined as the psychological processes that direct and sustain students’ behavior toward learning. The arrays of factors that may motivate a learner to learn have led to the traditional distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation involves doing something to obtain something else. Extrinsic motivation is often influenced by external incentives or rewarding. However, intrinsic motivation arises from internal factors. Thus, a child may be motivated by the enjoyment of the learning process itself or by a desire to make themselves feel better. Therefore, both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations are very essential elements on the learning process, and it is important for a teacher to be truly effective to help their students feel motivated to learn and achieve.

For young learners, intrinsically motivated to study is not easy thing. As a result, they will not be consistently motivated in learning and teaching process. It is related to their characteristic that is ego. This proves that teachers should give reward to their learner, but they do not always and should wisely give them rewards because it can make their intrinsic motivation drop. There are some rewards that teachers can use in the classroom such as praise, score or start, or games. However, before giving rewarding, teacher should know about when the reinforcement is given in order to increase motivation. According to Santrok (2010), they are:

1. Choose effective reinforcement. Not all reinforcers or rewards are the same for every child. Applied behavior analysis recommend that teachers find out what reinforcers work best with which children—that is, individualize the use of particular reinforcers (Scarlett, Pontem &Singh, 2009)
2. Make reinforcers contigent and timely. For a reinforcer to be effective, the teacher must give it only after the child performs the particular behavior. Reinforcers are more effective when they are given in a timely way, as soon as possible aft er the child performs the target behavior (Umbreit & others, 2007). Th is helps children see the contingency connection between the reward and their behavior. If the child completes the target behavior (such as doing 10 math problems by mid morning) and the teacher doesn’t give the child playtime until late afternoon, he might have trouble making the contingency connection.
3. Select the best schedule of reinforcement. Most of the examples given so far assume continuous reinforcement—that is, the child is reinforced every time he or she makes a response. The teachers can also use partial reinforcement. Partial reinforcement involves reinforcing a response only part of the time. Skinner developed the concept of schedules of reinforcement, which are partial reinforcement timetables that determine when a response will be reinforced.
4. Considering contracting. In contracting, reinforcement contingencies are put in writing

In Conclusion, rewarding can be use to increase frequency of good response of young learner.  This will also help to motivate young learner to study English. As a result, they engage themselves in every activities on learning and teaching process in the classroom.

References
Santrok, J.W., (2011). Educational Psychology (5th ed). New York: McGraw-Hill
Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Scarlett, W. G., Ponte, I. C., & Singh, J. P. (2009). Approaches to behavior and classroommanagement. Th ousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Challenges in Teaching English to Young Learner

Is teaching a challenge?  According to oxford essential dictionary, a challenge is a new or difficult thing that makes you try hard. It means that teaching is difficult thing. However, Different opinions may be appearing from this statement. As a teacher, either teaching is easy or difficult, many challenges still exist while teaching English especially young learner in the classroom. Here are some challenges faced by teachers

1.      Teaching speaking and writing 

         a)     not know what their teachers explain
         b)      Lack of vocabularies
         c)      Using their accent in speaking English
         d)     problems with their first language (illiteracy)
         e)      Easily get bored when learning either speaking or writing

2.      Motivation

         a)      How to motivate students to love English
         b)      The biggest challenge is to get them learn
         c)      In the classroom, they like appreciation or a present to increase their motivation
         d)     Teachers and parents should be involved to motivate them.

3.      Differences

         a)     Group differences such as culture, language, socioeconomic status, and gender
         b)     Individual differences such as intelligence, ability differences in the classroom,
                 cognitive styles and learning preferences, temperament and personality.
          c)    Exceptional student such as learning disabilities, speech or language impairments,mental
                 retardation, Emotional disturbance, attention-deficit disorder (ADD), and giftedness and
                 talent

4.      Teaching large classes

         a)      Difficulties in managing and controlling students in the classroom
         b)      Difficulties in delivering material
         c)      Fatigue

5.      Discipline

         a)      Children who lack of discipline at home
         b)      Children who chat with their friend while studying.

Still many issues dealing with challenges in teaching English to young learner. Every classroom has its own challenge; however, teachers should be become competent in their teaching, for instance in designing creative learning material, good classroom management, motivating their students in order that their students can be involved in every activity in teaching and learning process.

This article is based on primarily observation in one of international schools in Makassar

Similar research

Challenges in Teaching English to Young Learners: Global Perspectives and Local Realities

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Children’s cognitive development by Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget is Swiss psychologist conducting a lifelong study of children’s cognitive development in the past half-century (Piaget, 1954, 1964, 1969). Piaget’s theory focused on schema and assimilation and accommodation. According to Piaget, children are naturally curious explorers who are constantly trying to make sense of the world by interacting with their environment and with others (Loewenstein, 1994). In this process, they construct schema or mental process to organize information. Furthermore, assimilation involves trying to relate something new to something that we are really know whereas accommodation takes place when an individual changes an existing schema so that it can explain the new experiences. The processes of assimilation are motivated by need to find equilibrium, the natural tendency to find consistency in one’s thinking. To understand about Children’s cognitive development, Piaget believed that it happens in a structured sequence of four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

Firstly, sensorimotor stage (0-2 years old) shows that infants are able to coordinate their sensory and motor abilities to create a set of behavioral schema. In this stage infant only shows his reflective form to adapt with world. The main process of cognitive development in the stage is object permanent—understanding that object and phenomenon continually exist when the object and phenomenon cannot be seen, heard, and touched. It means that infant can distinguish his own self and environment.

Furthermore, preoperational stage (2-7 years old) have four characteristics. Firstly, the children have not yet developed the ability to think logically and they use their perception and intuition to know something and solve problem. Secondly, the children use symbols (e.g. words, numbers, languages) to represent actual object and event around them. The third characteristic in this stage is the use of pretend play. It means the children use object available in environment. The last characteristic is egocentrism. Children in this stage display that they are not able to consider the world from their own perspective.

Moreover, concrete operational stage (7-9 years old) is characterized by children ability to think logically about concrete object (Flavell, Miller, & Miller 2002). There are three kinds of the development; classification—the ability to group objects on the basis of common characteristic, seriation—the ability to order objects on the basis of increasing, decreasing, length, volume, and weight, transitivity—the ability to infer a relationship between two objects based on the known relationship of one of the object with  third object.  

In addition, formal operational stage (11⁺⁺ years old) is the same as the stage of concrete operations. It includes both logical and systematic thinking. There are five mental characteristics in this stage. First, the children can use propositional logic, ability to judge argument when the argument is opposite with reality. Second, the children can use hypothetical deductive reasoning, the ability to generate and test hypothesis or predictions by separating and controlling variables. Third, the children can use analogical reasoning, the ability to understand how something unfamiliar works based on an understanding of how something more familiar works. Fourth, the children can use combinatorial reasoning, the ability to conceptualize how several elements might be combined. Fifth, the children will also be able to solve problems involving probability and proportional reasoning.

However, why should teachers understand about children’s cognitive development? Because teachers should know appropriate approach, method, or technique to teach their student. Education should know be suitable with this development. It means teaching is based on their level, not easy or difficult, in order to not feel scare or boring, so the teachers must teach the students based on their needs.

For Furthermore information, reading these books                                        

John W. Santrock. (2001). Educational psychology (5^th ed). US: Mc Graw Hill

Moreno, R. (2010). Educational psychology. US: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Flavell, Miller, & Miller (2002). Cognitive Development (4^th ed) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice

           Hall.

Loewenstein, 1994. The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychology Bulletin, 117,75-98.  

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Young learners' Characteristics

Children are unique learners and they can easily imitate something for example a language. To know a language, they need an environment surrounded by targeted language that is meaningful because of the context and because of the way the teacher speak to them. As a language teacher, it is better that before teaching young learner, teachers should know the young learners’ characteristics in order to give ease to understand them. The characteristics cover their ways of thinking, their attitude, their aptitude, learning language, et cetera.

Here some researchers give their ideas as below                                                                                   1.    Brumfit (1997: v) gives a list of the characteristics which young learners share:

a.      Young learners are only just beginning their schooling, so that teachers have a major opportunity to mold their expectations of life in school.

b.      As a group they are potentially more differentiated than secondary or adult learners, for they are closer to their varied home cultures, and new to the conformity increasingly imposed across cultural grouping by the school.

c.        They tend to be keen and enthusiastic learners,

d.      Their learning can be closely linked with their development of ideas and concepts, because it is so close to their initial experiences of formal schooling.

e.       They need physical movement and activity as much as stimulation for their thinking, and the closer together these can be the better.

2.      Halliwel (1992: 3-5) clarifies the characteristics of children; 

a.      Children are already very good in interpreting meaning without necessarily understanding the individual word.

b.      Children already have great skill in using limited language creativity.

c.       Children frequently learn indirectly rather than directly.

d.      Children take good pleasure in finding and creating fun in what they do.

e.      Children have a ready imagination, children words are full of imagination and fantasy, and it is more than simply matter of enjoyment.

3.      The characteristic of young learners mentioned by Clark (1990: 6-8):

a.      Children are developing conceptually: they develop their way of thinking from the concrete to the abstract thing.

b.      Children have no real linguistics, different from the adult learners that already have certain purpose in learning language, for instances, to have a better job, children rarely have such needs in learning a foreign language. They learn subject what school provide for them.

c.       Children are still developing; they are developing common skill such as turn talking and the use of body language.

d.      Young children very egocentric, they tend to resolve around themselves.       

e.      Children get bored easily. Children have no choice to attend school. The lack of the choice means that class activities need to be fun interesting and exciting as possible by setting up the interesting activities. 

Furthermore we can conclude that the characteristics of young learners are

1.       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.

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

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

4.       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.

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

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

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

8.       They are less shy than older learners.

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

10.    They respond well to rewards from the teacher.

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

see next article about the Characteristics of Teacher for Young Learner

References

http://farwaniya03.tripod.com/id6.html

http://peni.staff.uns.ac.id/2008/10/10/young-learner-characteristics/

http://beddebah-haterulez.blogspot.co.id/2012/06/characteristic-of-young-learner.html

http://brendabrendon.blogspot.co.id/2012/12/characteristic-of-young-learners.html

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