CHAPTER II

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF

TEYL

Imagine yourself when you were six years old..

■ What was your typical day like?

■ Who did you interact with most often?

■ What activities did you do at home?

■ Did you often go to the park, beach, field,

forest, or other location?

■ What was your favorite part of the day, and

why?

■ What was your least favorite part of the day,

why?

Now think about yourself at school, in first grade

■ What kind of student were you?

■ What subjects did you like the most, why?

■ The least? Why?

■ What subjects were you the most and the

least successful in?

■ What class activities did you enjoy the most?

Least enjoy? Why?

How would you describe young learners?

Considerations for Teaching Young Learners

■ Characteristics of young learners

■ How children learn

■ How children learn a language

Characteristics of Young Learners:

1. Energetic and physically active

2. Spontaneous and not afraid to speak out or

participate

3. Curious and receptive to new ideas

4. Imaginative and enjoy make-believe

5. Easily distracted and have short attention spans

6. Egocentric and relate new ideas to themselves

7. Social and are learning to relate to others

1. Energetic and physically active

■ Utilize children’s natural tendency to be

physically active and not get frustrated with

them being not able to sit still for long.

■ Kinesthetic activities

■ Total Physical Response (TPR)

■ “Simon says” game

“Simon says”

2. Spontaneous and not afraid to speak out or participate

■ Less self-conscious than older learners

■ More willing to participate in activities and

speak out in English without feeling

embarrassed

■ Good imitators of language

■ Teachers can use simple songs, rhymes, chants,

dialogs

3. Children are curious and receptive

■ Natural curiosity

■ Introducing international cultures can

arose their curiosity

■ Activities should arouse their curiosity.

E.g. Mystery Bag

Mystery Bag

Mystery Bag

4. Children are imaginative and enjoy make-believe

■ Role-plays, drama games

■ Animal game

■ Dressing up in costumes

■ Popular children's stories and TV

shows

5. Children are easily distracted and have short attention spans

■ Although they have short attention spans

they can still concentrate on longer

activities if they are fun and interesting

■ Using brightly colored pictures, photos, and

posters.

■ Incorporating various audio-visual aids:

playing songs, movie clips

■ Planning lessons as a series of short

activities

5. Children are easily distracted and have short attention spans

■ Children aged 5-7: activities should be planned

between 5-10 minutes

■ Students aged 8-10 can handle activities that are

10-15 minutes long

■ If tasks are longer it is advised to break the activity

in smaller steps and give breaks in between them

■ Breaks can be as short as 1 minute but require

them to stand up, move around etc.

■ During a writing activity “Hand Shakes”

activity/break could be done

This teacher gets her students' attention

6. Children are egocentric and relate new ideas to themselves

■ YL are egocentric and have difficulty perceiving

things from another person’s perspective

■ Learning should be personalized

■ New information and language need to be

connected to them

■ Teaching adjectives to describe people can be

carried out through acrostic name poems about

students: e.g. YL named Minh might enjoy a poem

Musical, Intelligent, Nice, Happy

■ Posters, personalization of cultural topics as well

7. Children are social and are learning to relate to others

■ YL are very social and like to talk to each other

■ Love playing games with each other and can

cooperate to do activities

■ Activities should be balanced between student-

student pair, students-students groups,

teacher-student, teacher-students

■ Learning how to communicate with peers is an

important part of personal growth

How children learn..

CHILDREN:

■ 8. Learn by doing and interacting with

their environment

■ 9. Need support and scaffolding by the

teacher

8. Learn by doing and interacting with their environment

■ “ I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I

do, and I understand” – Confucius

■ The work of Jean Piaget affected teaching of

children a lot. According to him children learn

from active interaction with their environment

8. Learn by doing and interacting with their environment

Learn by doing and interacting with their environment

■ Teachers should bring in realia to class:

- Bring fruits and vegetables

- Animal toys, flashcards, trip to the zoo

- Take kids outside to the park when

teaching about nature

9. Need support and scaffolding by the teacher

■ Vygotsky (1962) found that children

construct knowledge through other

people (more competent peers, adults)

■ Lev Vygotsky stated that a child follows

an adult's example and gradually

develops the ability to do certain tasks

without help

9. Need support and scaffolding by the teacher

ZPD- is the difference between child’s capacity to solve

problems on her/his own and his/her capacity to solve

them with assistance or “scaffolding”.

9. Need support and scaffolding by the teacher

■ Cameron (2001) outlines what Bruner found in his

studies as effective scaffolding techniques used by

parents to support child’s learning:

➢ Created interest in the task

➢ Simplified the task

➢ Kept the child on track toward completing the task by

reminding what the goal was

➢ Pointed out what was important to do or showed the

child other ways of doing parts of the tasks

➢ Demonstrated an idealized version of the task

➢ Controlled the child’s frustration during the task

9. Need support and scaffolding by the teacher

➢5 suggestions to consider:

➢ Create interest in the task!

➢ Simplify the task!

➢ Keep children on task!

➢ Model the task, including different ways to do it!

(Gardner’s Multiple intelligences)

➢ Control children’s frustration during the task!

How children learn language

10. Need a learning environment

similar to first language acquisition

11. Learn language through lots of

meaningful exposure and practice

12. Do not learn language through

explicit grammatical explanations

Effective Language Teaching Practices for Young Learners

■ Recommendation #1: Use fun and engaging activities

■ Recommendation #2: Students are engaged in a variety of interactions

■ Recommendation #3: cater to different learning styles and intelligences

■ Recommendation #4: Make language learning meaningful and relevant

■ Recommendation #5: Introduce learners to different cultures

■ Recommendation #6: Use various teaching strategies that set up learners for success.