Teaching English to Young Learners- A Story-based Task Cycle

8/10/2019 Teaching English to Young Learners- A Story-based Task Cycle

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Teaching English to Young Learners: A Story-based Task Cycle

1. Introduction

Teaching English to young learners (YLs) is invariably different from

adult English as a second language (ESL) classes (Cameron, 2001).

Young learners, generally classed as from being from three to

twelve years of age, are in different developmental stages to adults

and teenagers (Yolageldili and Arikan, 2011; Roul, 2014).

Therefore, it is necessary that teachers take into account this

difference and design activities which are age appropriate,

incorporating different methods and strategies of teaching. Below I

will propose a possible task cycle for a class of Belgian primary

school children. This task cycle will take for its inspiration the

childrens book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, and will

thus be following a storytelling-based learning and teaching

approach (SBLT) (Kim, 2013). I will begin by providing a brief

description of the task cycle with aims, resources and the expected

procedure. I will then briefly explore some of the most appropriate

methods of teaching English to young learners, before concluding

with a more detailed rationale of the individual activities in my task

cycle.

2. The Task Cycle

2.1 Background and Learners

I am preparing this cycle for use in an English as a foreign language

(EFL) classroom in Belgium. It is an extra-curricular lesson run for

one hour and forty-five minutes on a Wednesday afternoon. The

children are between six and seven years of age. They are relativebeginners to English, this being their first year of study, but I will


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run this task cycle towards the end of the year, when students will

already have completed most of a years activities. The children all

speak French as their first language (L1).

Due to the Belgian school system, most of the children will be intheir first year of primary school, having already completed two-

four years at nursery school (La Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles,

2014). I therefore expect to learners to have some experience of

working with other children and knowledge of how to interact with

both students and teachers alike (Cameron, 2001).

However, children are rarely taught literacy skills before attending

primary school (La Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles, 2014). I will

therefore not include many activities which draw on reading and

writing skills, as these are as yet insecure in the L1 (Moon, 2008).

2.2 Aims and Expectations

2.2.1 Linguistic Aims

The length of the session will afford me time to look at and revise

various collections of vocabulary. I am presuming that the YLs will

have previously been taught numbers up to twenty, the days of the

week, and colours. I aim to revise and strengthen the YLs

knowledge of these terms, so that it becomes conceptual (Cameron,

2001).

In this session I will revise and increase the YLs knowledge of food

vocabulary. They will have encountered some items before, and

will likely be able to remember the ones that are most within their

schema (Cameron, 2001) such as cake, apple and ice cream.

However, they will not know less common fruits such as plums, and

will probably also not know more exotic foods such as salami. The

primary vocabulary collection the YLs will therefore be utilising is

that of food.


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The students will have encountered and used simple present tense

verbs such as I am he is and I have; I expect the learners to

remember these structures with prompting, but not without support

and scaffolding tasks (Cameron, 2001). Through the post-taskphase, children will strengthen their confidence with these

structures and go further, using them with the pronouns my, your,

his and her. I expect this to be a point of differentiation, where

some students gain a firm grasp on these structures, and other

students have a receptive or memory knowledge of these terms but

would not be able to reproduce them without heavy scaffolding

(Cameron, 2001).

During the artistic and kinaesthetic tasks I also plan to introduce

the phrase can I have. This phrase will be introduced in this

session and strengthened in a subsequent lesson. Therefore in this

lesson, I will teach this language in an indirect manner to begin

with, allowing the students to discover the language through

interaction with each other in the tasks (Bourke, 2006).

2.2.2 Non-linguistic aims

As Scott et al note (2004), SBLT is a child-centred learning

approach which engages and motivates learners in an activity. This

is particularly true when material is appropriate for their age and

context (Gillanders and Castro, 2007). Therefore, this task cycle

also has affective aims of improving the childrens confidence in

English (Kim, 2013) and of allowing children to enjoy the language

through a medium with which they are familiar (REF).

Moreover, my chosen task cycle will teach the children about the

subject matter of the book; namely, caterpillars metamorphosing

into butterflies. In this way knowledge and understanding about

the world is taught through English (Korosidou and Griva, 2013).


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I am including sensory, kinaesthetic tasks such as cutting, gluing

and painting. These activities not only stimulate and involve the

childrens senses but also promote independent, self-led activity

which will aid in the YLs all-round development (Roul, 2014).

2.3 Expected Procedure

As the children are arriving, I will provide a colouring sheet of a

caterpillar for those who are early. In this way, the children feel

welcomed and motivated as soon as they enter the classroom

(Roul, 2014). I will put the title caterpillar on the sheet as

information for those who are able to read, but this will not be an

obligatory step (Moon, 2008).

We will begin by learning food vocabulary. At first I will drill

unknown words; I will hold up pictures of the foods and elicit the

English word from the children, teaching it where necessary. I will

then continue this with a speed up activity; changing the pictures

more and more quickly so that the children have to repeat the

vocabulary increasingly rapidly, so adding aspects of gaming into

the drill.

Having completed this step, I will consolidate the vocabulary by

playing touch the wall. I will place the pictures on the walls

around the classroom, then I shout out one item of food at a time,

and the YLs will run as quickly as possible to the correct item.

All the children have learnt their numbers up to twenty in English,

but it would be prudent to revise this lexis so that the vocabulary is

retrievable (Cameron, 2001). First of all I will give each child a

piece of paper with a number on it and ask them to reorganise

themselves into the correct order. They will then attempt to shout

out their numbers in English. If a child cannot remember his or her

number, I will ask the other children for assistance.


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After this game, I will gather the children again onto the floor.

Earlier in the course the children have learnt days of the week;

however, they may well not be able to remember them without

assistance (Cameron, 2001). We will consequently do a revisionactivity in order to refresh their memories. I will start by asking if

the children know what day it is. If they struggle with

comprehension at this point, I will speak in the L1 (Inbar-Lourie,

2010). I will then ask about yesterday and tomorrow. In order to

encourage memory of these words, we will use a clapping chant

(Roul, 2014). Details of the chant can be found in the appendices.

We will have already performed this chant when we first learnt days

of the week, so this activity is known to students.

Once we have completed the vocabulary exercises, I will sit the

children down in order to read the story. Firstly I will perform a

picture walk in order to familiarise them with the narrative and

images (Gillanders and Castro, 2012). Afterwards I will read the

story to them in English, going slowly and pointing out the numbers

and food items clearly. At this point, the children will listen and

look at the pictures, and indirectly be familiarising themselves with

the vocabulary (Kim, 2013). I will then read the book through a

second time. With this reading, I will elicit more involvement from

the children. I will ask them how many items the caterpillar is

eating and what he is eating. If they do not understand the English

questions, I will utilise the L1 where necessary (Inbar-Lourie,

2010).

Directly after reading the book, the students will complete their own

versions with prepared cut-outs of the food items and the days of

the week. The seven year olds, who have both higher literacy skills

and more English knowledge than the six year olds, will also glue

the days of the week onto the posters. I will support where

necessary by helping with cutting, reading, and comprehension.

During this phase, I will indirectly introduce the phrase can I


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have, for example can I have the glue? I will ask more confident

students to repeat this formula.

At this point in the lesson, we will have a break and a snack.

During this break, I will read the book one more time. Again, I willelicit numbers and food lexis from the children. Additionally, this

time round I will teach the phrase he was still hungry. I will

translate this into French for comprehension purposes. To

incentivise the children to learn, I will inform them that everybody

who can correctly tell me the phrases he was still hungry and can

I have [a food item] will be allowed one of the items eaten by the

caterpillar. Nevertheless, in order to encourage and comfort the

YLs, all students will be allowed a snack whether or not they have

mastered the phrases.

After this phase, we will do a kinaesthetic painting activity.

Children will paint their own butterflies using a mirror method; they

will paint half of the paper and then fold their butterflies, so making

them symmetrical. During this time I will circle and ask students

simple questions about their artwork. Again, details can be found in

the lesson plan in the appendices.

After they have finished painting, the children will then form simple

sentences about their butterflies using the correct pronouns. For

example, they will say my butterfly is red and your butterfly is

blue. We will do this with vocabulary that they have already

learnt, using my, your, his and her. This is the last activity

in my task cycle. Once all children have finished painting, I will

gather all children together and we will repeat these sentences as a

class before the children leave.

2.4 Preparation and Materials

It is self-evident that in order to complete this task cycle, I will

need a copy of the original storybook. The illustrations in the


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original book will appeal to YLs and encourage them to focus on the

narrative (Roul, 2014). For the pre-reading vocabulary learning

phase, I will need flashcards of all the foods which will appear in the

book. I will print these in A3 size in order to be obvious whenplaying touch the wall.

For the first post-reading task, in which children will be recreating

the book through gluing pictures in the right order, I will need

enough photocopies of all the relevant foodstuffs for each child. I

will also need scissors and glue and will assess the scissor skills of

each child before leaving them to work independently. Additionally,

I will provide left-handed scissors if necessary.

When we are painting caterpillars and butterflies, the children will

need paint. As they are still young and so likely to struggle with

cleanliness, I will provide aprons in order to protect their clothes.

Finally, I will need snacks for the childrens breaktime; I will not

bring all the items the caterpillar eats, but will bring sliced apples,

pears and strawberries; lollipops; and chocolate and vanilla

cupcakes.

3. Rationale and Justification

The theoretical grounding for my task cycle is Vygotskys notion of

childrens knowledge being socially mediated and facilitated (1978).

To Vygotsky, children learn through interaction with adults and to a

lesser extent other children. Through being assisted and scaffolded

by those with more knowledge, the children achieve more than they

would independently (Vygotsky, 1978). This is particularly true

when the desired learning outcome is within the childrens zone of

proximal development (ZPD); that is to say that it is slightly beyond

their current abilities, but not significantly so (Cameron, 2001). It

is on this theory of socially mediated learning that I am basing my

task cycle. In choosing SBLT, the teacher becomes the mediator


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activities with active participation and concrete outcomes (Bourke,

2006).

As Roul posits, audio-visual activities are also particularly

appropriate for YLs, as they provide concrete experiences forlearners and also help them to develop a positive attitude towards

learning (2014). This is also true for kinaesthetic activities such as

painting (Cameron, 2001).

3.2 Storytelling-based learning

Storytelling is a very positive activity for YLs because it is a

narrative which they recognise from their L1 (Cameron, 2001).

Furthermore, it encapsulates ideas and concepts from their schema

which assist comprehension, as well as teaching them about new

concepts and developing their understanding of the world

(Gillanders and Castro, 2012). This is akin to Vygotskys principles

of adults facilitating childrens learning through introducing them to

unknown concepts and ideas (Vygotsky, 1978).

Another advantage of SBLT is that children also learn

subconsciously about phonological awareness, syntax, and language

in print, which will aid them both when they begin producing longer

discourse themselves and particularly when they begin to read and

write (Kim, 2013). It is suggested that children need both direct

and incidental language input in order to learn a language;

storybooks do exactly this as they use vocabulary which the

children know with more complicated lexis which they have yet to

be specifically taught (Gillanders and Castro, 2011).

3.3 A detailed rationale of the proposed task cycle

The first three tasks in my cycle are recapping and learning

vocabulary. Vocabulary is an essential part of English for young


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learners, as children are often encouraged to view language as a set

of words (Cameron, 2001). Furthermore, they view language in a

very thematic way so learning a collection of vocabulary is

comprehensible to them (Bourke, 2006). The use of pictures in thefirst task will motivate the YLs, as children have a very visual

learning style and are motivated by colours and pictures (Scott et

al, 2004). Similarly, touch the wall and the reordering activities

both ask children to use physical movement. Again, this is a proven

method of motivation for children, who have a short attention span

and ability to focus (Yolageldili and Arikan, 2011).

Touch the wall and the number reordering activity both contain

the advantages outlined above of learning through games. Touch

the wall includes a competitive element which motivates children

to beat their counterparts. However, in order to ensure the YLs feel

comfortable in the classroom, if the younger YLs (YYLs) are

struggling to keep up with the older YLs (OYLs) and feeling

discouraged, I will abandon the game aspects (Cameron, 2003).

As English and French both use Latin numerals, the number task is

appropriate for children as it uses schema already known to them

(Cameron, 2001). This task therefore follows Piagets views that

children construct meaning according to their previous knowledge of

the world (Piaget, in Cameron, 2001).

For my task cycle, a receptive knowledge of days of the week is

important, but an active knowledge is not crucial (Cameron, 2001).

Therefore it is not essential that children remember all seven days

of the week, so assigning them simply one day to remember is an

efficient way of teaching them how to interact with others in group

situations (Bourke, 2006). Furthermore, the rhythmic chant holds

many of the same benefits as using songs; it helps with

pronunciation, intonation and stress (Scott et al, 2004).

Additionally, the physical demands of sitting still can be difficult for

children, so by allowing them to use their bodies it enables them to


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give more of their attention to the linguistic aspects of the task

(Cameron, 2001). Moreover, I envisage that YLs will have already

performed this chant when first learning days of the week, so this

activity is known to students. As they already know the task,students are more confident performing it, so diminishing anxiety

and confusion (Bourke, 2006; Cameron, 2001).

With regard to the story itself, Gillanders and Castro suggest

beginning with a picture walk of the book before using the

vocabulary, in order to familiarise YLs with the ideas and concepts

in the book (2012).

When reading the story together, YLs can include knowledge from

their current schema, so making the activity relevant (Cameron,

2001). Furthermore, they will be exposed to a great number of

speech features which will contribute to indirect learning (Kim,

2013).

The second reading involves the children stating the correct food

items and numbers for the story. The reason I have chosen these

particular words is because they are essential to the understanding

of the text; the child can gain a conceptual understanding of the

rest of the story without understanding all the other words

invidivually (Gillanders and Castro, 2011).

The third reading of the book, which accompanies the snack time, is

characterised by the children repeating the phrase but he was still

hungry. By asking the children to repeat an entire phrase, it

enables them to internalise grammatical structures (Ahn, 2012, in

Kim, 2013). Additionally, the repetition allows YLs to predict the

storys outcome, which helps them to feel confident and motivated

(Kim, 2013; Cameron, 2001).

Another benefit of teaching an entire phrase is that children often

like using formulaic language as it helps them feel confident that

their linguistic production is correct (Cameron, 2001). This


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structure can be referred back to in future lessons, as children are

confident using the complete phrase.

The cut-and-stick activity utilises the childrens sensory motor skills,

which is an important part of their general development (Roul,2014). It also asks them to count, so adding an element of maths

to the task. Korosidou and Griva note that language can be a very

useful and appropriate way of learning other subjects, as it allows

children to integrate skills from different disciplines and widen their

concepts of language being more than mere words (2013). In this

section of the task cycle I will also be re-teaching the students the

phrase can I have. This type of incidental learning is one of the

greatest benefits of task-based learning (Korosidou and Griva,

2013). The children who struggle to remember this phrase may

learn it from other students; similarly, it is advantageous for

children to work together and cooperate with each other as it

increases their interpersonal social interaction skills (Sensoy and

zad, 2009).

Also important for the affective aspects of learning, the inclusion of

a snack means that children replenish their energy supplies and feel

nurtured (Bourke, 2006). In this way the affective side of learning

is comprehensively aided.

By ending with a painting task, the children are again using sensory

motor skills which aid their overall development (Roul, 2014). As

the children will be growing tired by this stage (Bourke, 2006), the

task requires less productive language from them (Cameron, 2001)

and few literacy skills.

The children will be practising a grammatical structure that they

have already learned, that of subject + is + colour. We will begin

by using the pronoun it, with which they are all comfortable.

Then we will extend it slightly into other pronouns. As the children

already know half of the structure, this task is within their ZPD

(Vygotsky, 1978). Furthermore, by asking children to comment on


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other students pictures, they are again working in a group and so

varying the interaction patterns (Bourke, 2006). By ending with a

kinesthetic, artistic activity, the children will enjoy the language

learning experience (Guersoy, 2011). Where needed, I will providescaffolding for their sentences through modelling and prompting, so

that they do not venture beyond the ZPD (Cameron, 2001; Bourke,

2006). Furthermore, as I can differentiate this activity depending

on the linguistic ability of the specific child for example, sticking

to my butterfly is blue for weaker students but varying to my

caterpillar has eight legs for more confident, advanced students I

can more accurately cater to the YLs individual needs, so making

them feel valued, secure, and successful (Bourke, 2006; Meyer,

2013; Cameron, 2001).

4. Anticipated problems

The first problem I anticipate is that children may not remember as

much of the necessary vocabulary as I hope they will (Nunan, 1994,

in Bourke, 2006). If this occurs, I will merely introduce extra

vocabulary learning activities, with numbers and colours. I will

have flashcards prepared in case of this, along with activities such

as bingo, counting and arithmetic, and matching activities.

Full details of these can be found in the appendices.

Another problem may be the attention span of some students, as

six year olds have a far shorter ability to focus than adults

(Yolageldili and Arikan, 2011). They may therefore find it difficult

to sit through two readings of the story. However, for this reason I

am involving the children in the storytelling with eliciting and

spotting activities (Gillanders and Castro, 2012).

One other linguistic issue of that of countable and uncountable food

types; students may say phrases like can I have a cheese. YLs

are not able to understand metalanguage (Bourke, 2006), so will


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not understand this explicitly. As it is recommended to teach YLs

simple structures to begin with and then develop these over time

(Cameron, 2001), I will counter this by focusing only on the

countable food items, such as cupcake, apple, and lollipop.A final problem I anticipate is that of giving out snacks during break

time. If I offer children different foods, it may become competitive

as to who is allowed to eat what. In order to ensure a stress-free

environment (Bourke, 2006), I will therefore ensure that all foods

that I bring are permitted by the parents, and that I have enough of

each snack food to accommodate all children.

5. Concluding Remarks

In this essay, I have presented a task cycle based on Eric Carles

The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I chose this book as the basis for my

task cycle as it allows me to focus on vocabulary that is appropriate

for and of interest to the children in my class (Bourke, 2006).

Furthermore, as narratives are a known and accepted part of a

childs universe (Cameron, 2001), the use of a storybook enables

children to feel relaxed and confident. I have complemented this

narrative with activities that teach children vocabulary and short

grammatical structures, and have used repetition and games in

order to help the YLs remember these forms (Meyer, 2013). In this

way, I believe that the proposed task cycle would be fruitful not

only for the childrens linguistic development but also for their

enjoyment of the English language and learning in general.


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Appendix IPlan of Task Cycle with Timings

Timing Activity Aim

Until 14:00 Welcome children withcolouring pages

Gather and settlestudents

14:00-14:10 Drill food lexisPlay touch the wall

Revise and learn foodlexisConsolidate lexisthrough game

14:10-14:20 Number reordering andshouting out task

Revise numbervocabularyUse physical activities to

strengthen learning

14:20-14:30 Days of the weekclapping chant

Revise days of the weekTeach word stress andrhythmInvolve kinaestheticactivities

14:30-14:45 Read The Very HungryCaterpillarYLs to respond to

teacher at appropriatetimes

Follow and understand anarrative storyUse lexis from earlier

tasksBring in outsideknowledge (of insects)to classroom

14:45-15:05 Cutting and stickingactivity: makingstoryboards

Recreating the narrativeto check comprehensionUsing new vocabulary indifferent situations

15:05-15:20 Snack and repeated

book reading

Children regain energy

Increasing amount ofinvolvement in book andstoryLearning formulaiclanguage

15:2015:45 Painting own butterfliesor caterpillarsDescribing them using aformulaic expression

Use of structurepronoun + is + colour


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Appendix II

Materials and Further Instructions for Tasks

1. Food Vocabulary and Touch the Wall

An A3 copy of each of the food items mentioned in The VeryHungry Caterpillar will be printed and laminated for durability.These will be glued to the wall with Blu-tack.

2. Number Reordering

The following numbers will be enlarged to A4 size each andprinted off so that each student can be given one number.For this task, the students will firstly get themselves into the

correct order and then shout out their numbers in sequence.If they appear confident, the teacher can extend this activityby pointing to students out of sequence and asking for theirnumber.

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12

3. Days of the week chant

Students will be sat in a circle and taught the followingactions:

Clap hands on knees, clap hands together, click right finger,click left finger.For students who cannot click their fingers, the last two stepscan be altered to clap hands above head twice.

Practise this rhythm until students are confident.

The teacher starts off the chart. It is a very simple three-word chant, with each syllable being one clap. Each line willbe repeated twice.

It is MondayIt is TuesdayIt is WednesdayIt is ThursdayIt is Friday

It is SaturdayIt is Sunday


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If the teacher feels it is appropriate, an extra clap can beintroduced for Saturday, which has an extra syllable.When the chant has been completed once, it will be repeated,but this time a different student will shout out the day each

time. As there are 12 students in the class, pairs of studentswill be given a day from Monday to Saturday, and the teacherwill finish off the chant with Sunday.

4. Cutting and sticking activity

A copy of the following images will be provided for each child.Students will be given sheets of paper with seven sections.Students must cut out food items and glue them into theboxes, ascending in number each time. For more confident

and literate learners, I will also provide them with the days ofthe week to include on their storyboards.


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MONDAY TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY THURSDAYFRIDAY SATURDAYSUNDAY

5. Painting task

Children will be provided with aprons, a paintbrush each, and

a mix of watercolour paints. Paper templates will be providedin the shape of butterflies, as shown below. This template isnot to scale; the actual template will be A4-sized.The teacher will model how to paint half of the butterfly andthen fold the paper so that the paint covers the other sidealso. When performing this final stage of the task, childrenmay well need physical support from the teacher in order tofold and press evenly and without smudging the paint.

6. Extra Activities

a) Colour flashcardsIn case it is necessary, I will print off A4 sheets of each of thefollowing colours: black, white, red, yellow, blue, green,orange, purple, pink, brown. If the children are struggling to

remember the colours, we will use these with a matchingactivity; I will ask YLs to find something that is


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brown/orange/etc. The children will search in the room for anitem, locate one, and bring it back and place it on the correctsheet of paper. At the end of each round, they will thenrepeat It is [colour].

b)Number flashcardsIf necessary, I will use the number cards used in thereordering activity above in order practise this vocabulary.We will begin with simple drilling, and then I will ask thechildren to perform simple arithmetic sums (using only thenumbers 1-20), as I know they will have covered these inschool. They will tell me the numbers in English in order topractise the lexis.

c)

BingoAgain, if it is necessary to spend more time on particularlexis, I will provide the bingo grids below. I will ask studentsstudents to either draw pictures of food items, write numbers,numbers, or use colours in the boxes, depending on whichvocabulary set we are practising. I will then say thefoods/numbers/colours one at a time, and if students havedrawn that item they will cross it off. The first child to crosscross off all of the items in their grid shouts bingo! andwins.

Teaching English to Young Learners- A Story-based Task Cycle

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