Monday, January 23, 2017

Chain Games

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By Eliana Fernandez Malla- Dominican Republic and Jekaterina Mazure- Latvia
Material          : Flashcard
Organization   : Whole Class
Time               : 20-25 minutes
Aim                : To practice or revise a new vocabulary set
Description     : Children sit in a circle. They learn a new vocabulary set (For example.   Vegetables)
Preparation     : You will need to prepare flasscard of the words you want the children to learn
Procedures:
  1.  Introduce a set of words you want the children to learn, for example fruit and vegetables through flashcard. After practicing the pronunciation, stick the card on the board (you might want to write the word under the card)
  2.  Ask the children to sit in a circle. explain they will have to use the flashcards to try to remember a list of words 
  3. Introduce the phrase. “My auntie went to market, and she bought an apple’. The first child should add to the list, using another word from the flashcard, in the following way: ‘My auntie went to market and she bought an apple and some carrots’. The activity goes on with each child adding to the list after having repeated all the items before  
  4. Repeat the activity, but this time take the flashcard off the board and erase any writing
  5. Note:You can help children who are struggling by mouthing the words in the list
Alternatives :
  1.  It is not necessary to teach a set of vocabulary first. The children can add whatever they like to the list from words they remember. This takes much less time
  2. Another alternative is to start the next item in the list with the last letter of the previous item. For example. I went to market and bought an apple, an elephant, some trees and a snake 
  3. Add a rhythm. A model the rhythm by slapping your kness (gently) twice, clapping (twice) and then clicking the fingers on each hand in turn. Get all the children to take up the rhythm. Then say your own name on the first click and one of the children’s names on the second. The child then says their name on the first click and another child’s on the second, Once the rhythm has been established, introduce a word family, for example, fruit. The activity starts again, but this time you say a fruit with the first click and a name of a child with the second. For example, ‘Banana, Peter’. Peter then has to say, For example, ‘Apple, Justina’, and soon.
Reference
Crazy Animals and Other Activities for Teaching English to Young Learners

BOOKS OF YOUNG LEARNERS

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  1. Crazy Animals and Other Activities for Teaching English to Young Learners 
  2. Teaching Language to Young Learners (Cambridge Language Teaching Library 
  3. Five Minutes Activities for Young Learner 
  4. Developing the Gifted and Talented Young Learner 
  5. Identity and the Young English Language Learner 
  6. The Express Picture Dictionary for Young Learners: Activity Book 
  7. Assessing Young Language Learners (Cambridge Language Assessment 
  8. Practical English Language Teaching: PELT Young Learners 
  9. Cambridge Young Learner English Test 
  10. Do and Understand: 50 Action Stories for Young Learners 
  11. Move With English: Pupils' Book B (Young Learners Go) 

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Challenges in Teaching English to Young Learner

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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

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Children’s cognitive development by Jean Piaget

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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 (5th ed). US: Mc Graw Hill
Moreno, R. (2010). Educational psychology. US: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Flavell, Miller, & Miller (2002). Cognitive Development (4th ed) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
           Hall.
Loewenstein, 1994. The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychology Bulletin, 117,75-98.  



Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Young learners' Characteristics

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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