1

Short Certificate – Teaching English to Young Learners

I. Some things to consider when teaching children 2

II. Teaching phonics to young learners 3

1. Single-letter sounds 3

2 . Double-letter sounds 5

III. Teaching language units to young learners 7

1. How to teach vocabulary 7

IV . Teaching the skills to young learners 13

1. How to teach writing 13

2 . How to teach speaking 13

V . Discipline in the classroom 16

VI. No learning without fun, no fun without learning 18

1. Games and activities 18

2 . Planning an interesting lesson 20

2

I. Some things to consider when teaching children

Teaching children can be one of the most rewarding things you can do as an EFL teacher, but it is not enough to simply play games and have fun. If you want to teach children effectively, there are many things to consider.

It is important to consider how children learn. Teaching children should be child-initiated, so you need to create a need in the child to learn and then fill that need.

Unlike adults, children often come to English classes because they have to, so one of your tasks is to create an environment that makes them want to learn and participate. Once they have that desire, teaching them becomes a much better experience.

This is why games and activities are so effective for young children. Getting a child involved emotionally and psychologically will greatly enhance their progress. There are plenty of activities for you to try on your classes in this module, but ultimately, for best results, use your own judgement and imagination.

You will need to decide how to teach your young class to understand spoken English, to speak, read and write.

If you are teaching children who are not familiar with the English alphabet, you will need to show and explain how English works, using patterns and styles of writing that may not exist in their own language.

You will also need to help your young learners to create and pronounce different and unfamiliar sounds in English.

P reparing well for your young learners is key. Here are some of the reasons: You can ensure your class stay focused You can ensure they stay motivated You can arrange a variety of activities in one lesson You can keep interest up It helps define the students' progress

3

II. Teaching phonics to young learners

1. Single-letter sounds

Phonics are the sounds of the letters. For 'W ' we would teach the sound ' W ' as in wood. P honics are N O T the names of the letters. For 'W ' we would not teach ' double-u' .

Imagine it’s your first class with children aged about 5 years old. You’re planning on teaching the alphabet. You’re probably not going to teach all 2 6 letters in one go. In that case the best idea is to start with the vowels – a, e, i, o and u. They are the most common sounds in the language and they can be tricky with the different possible pronunciations.

When teaching phonics, it’s a good idea to do it by associating each one with a word. An example of this is a for apple. When you say “a”, hold up a flash card with a picture of an apple. Get your children to repeat what you say: “a - apple”.

Phonics aren’t straightforward because sometimes letters change their sound. Look at the following words and say them aloud to yourself: Ate Car Eat Ant Air

In each case, the letter 'a' has a different sound. Sometimes when two letters are put together, they create a different sound. It's important to stress this to children who are just starting to learn English. It is also important to begin by teaching one pronunciation of a letter rather than try to teach all the different pronunciations in one go.

Some of your students may get confused with 'a – apple' and 'u – umbrella'. Say the patterns to yourself. The difference between 'a' and 'u' is very slight and non-native children learners will find it difficult to master.

Drilling plays a very important part. Remember to drill thoroughly and make sure you drill individually as well as chorally. Make sure you model each letter clearly when you drill (particularly the difference between 'a' and 'u'). Repetition is a key factor in helping children to learn English.

Before moving to the consonants, spend at least three lessons concentrating on the five vowels. Use games and activities with your class to help your students familiarise themselves with these letters and the related vocabulary.

4

Use a phonic as a springboard to teach other vocabulary: 'a' – ant and 'a' -album are two suggestions. Use flash cards showing other nouns such as 'antelope' and 'Africa.'

Be very careful with the words you choose as the pronunciation can be different to the phonic you are teaching. For example the 'a' sound in 'ace' (playing card) is quite different to the 'a' in 'ant'. Remember to teach the word first and then show its association to each phonic. After around three lessons, teach your students another five letters. The most commonly used consonants in the alphabet are t - n- r- s- h: t - tiger n - nut r - ring s - sock h- hat

At this point, it's a good idea to avoid words beginning with 'sh', 'ch' or 'th'. You can teach these double-letter sounds once your young students have mastered the complete alphabet.

Spend a further three lessons on these letters but don’t forget the ones you’ve already taught. Keep going back to them at regular intervals. Think about what games and activities you could incorporate phonics into on a regular basis.

Here are some useful sequences for teaching the remaining letters of the alphabet. Sequence 1: b - book c - cat d - dog g - gorilla p - panda

Sequence 2: m - mouse j - jacket k - kangaroo f - fish l – lion

Sequence 3 q - queen w - watch v - violin x - x-ray y - yacht z - zebra

5

Notice how the words chosen are immediately accessible to children. Make sure you make your lessons memorable using fun and relevant activities.

Animal names often appeal to young learners. Why not imitate some animal sounds? Your students will have great fun listening to and imitating you. Every country has different animal sounds, and you are likely to find them amusing. Incorporate these new phonics with the others in all the games and activities you play during the course of your lesson.

At the end of each lesson you will need to make sure that your children are able to practise writing these down in their notebooks.

2. Double-letter sounds

After you have taught your young learners all the letters of the alphabet and they are familiar with their sounds and can identify them as written symbols, it will be time to introduce double-letter sounds.

There are a variety of these in the alphabet, which produce a different sound when placed together. For example, when the letters 'p' and 'h' are put together, they create the sound 'f'.

Sometimes the same double letters can produce a variety of different sounds. Say the following words to yourself and notice the difference in pronunciation of the double letter: Foot Spoon

Cow Bowl

There are many potentially confusing double letter sounds in the English language, e.g. gh. Wecan pronounce this f as in cough, g as in ghost or even silent as in bough. You can easily understand how confusing this could be to young learners of English.

Here are some examples of double letter sounds. Take a couple of minutes to think of words that contain the following combinations:

1. ai 2 . ar 3 . ay 4. ch 5. ea 6. ee 7 . ir

6

8 . oa 9. aw 10. oo 11. or 12 . ou 13 . ur 14. ow 15. oy 16. sh

Like with single-letter sounds, when teaching these double-letter sounds it’s helpful to associate the sound with a noun. For example: 'ai' - sail, tail, train 'ar '- car, carpet, card, shark

Keep to nouns at the beginning and then you can gradually introduce verbs later. After the children have made considerable progress, they will be able to use these double-letter sounds to help them pronounce new vocabulary easily.

You are laying the foundations of a new language in your learners. Teaching the basics well will help them in their future learning.

7

III. Teaching language units to young learners

1. How to teach vocabulary

There are thousands of new words to learn when learning a new language. When teaching children, we should aim to teach simple nouns that we can easily show the meaning of.

Flash cards are very easy to use because all you have to do is show your students a flash card and ask, “what is it?”.

The children will be inquisitive at first, especially if you were asking the question first without showing them the picture. Another idea is to gradually reveal the picture to build anticipation. Make sure that your voice expresses curiosity and fosters a spirit of inquiry.

Although flash cards are an excellent way of teaching nouns, it is always good to bring variety to a lesson by using realia. W hat objects are in your school that you could take into a class to teach new vocabulary? Are there things in your house you could show your students? Your students are interested in you and will warm to you if they think they are learning something about their teacher.

Don’t teach too much vocabulary in one lesson. If you are teaching a phonic, perhaps you may want to teach a word that is associated with it. For example, 'e' – elephant and 'e' – egg. Don’t teach the word zebra until you have taught the phonic 'z'.

Once the students are familiar with the vocabulary, you can teach them plurals. You usually do this when introducing them to numbers. One car becomes two cars. One apple becomes two apples, then three apples. This can be done again by using pictures, flash cards and realia.

Think carefully about the question forms you want to use with the children. “What is it?” becomes “What are they?”. Again, you show by example and through use and practice the children will learn the structure, the pattern and the form.

Start off with a simple question form: T: “How many apples are there?” S: “There are four apples.”

If you are using realia, make sure you have enough apples to go round the class. If you decide to use chocolate, your students will love you forever.

Be very careful about the difference between uncountable and countable nouns. For example, look at how the following dialogue goes wrong: T: “How many cars are there? S: “There are four cars.”

8

T: “How many apples are there?” S: “There are eight apples.”

T: “How much milk is there?” S: “There are many milk.”

You can teach your young students the difference between much and many when you feel they are ready. In the meantime, focus on simple vocabulary and countable nouns that your students will be able to use.

If you use uncountable nouns, it may be an idea to introduce them in a container first. For example: a bottle of milk, a bag of rice, a glass of water, a box of chocolates, a loaf of bread or a can of cola.

Using these points with what you’ve learnt about phonics and double letter sounds will help you decide how and when to introduce vocabulary.

Start teaching your students how to read from the very first lesson. Make sure that they can see the letters and identify them with each phonic sound. After around ten to fifteen lessons, you will have taught your young learners enough letters for them to start putting them together into words.

If you spend three lessons on the five vowels as suggested, then spend another six lessons on t, n, r, s, h, b, c, d, g and p, you can start saying words that they have already learned. Look at the following three-letter words: Dog Cat Bat H at Ten

Imagine you are going to teach the word ‘dog’. Look at how it is broken into stages, using phonics.

The teacher gets the students to say each phonic separately, without the noun association.

d… o… g…

The teacher then encourages them to say it faster and faster: d… o… g… d… o… g… d… o… g…Suddenly they realise that they have read the complete word 'dog' using the English alphabet.

9

Here are some other helpful techniques: Use your bank of vocabulary, and when your children have more confidence, introduce four-letter words, then five.

You can use letter tiles with these activities to practise saying words. Get the children to read them using phonics. Encourage the children to roll the phonics together and say the word quickly.

When you have taught enough double-letter sounds you will want to stretch your young learners with words such as: Shark Cockroach Chicken Igloo Sheep

Teaching to pronounce ‘shark’ looks like it might be tricky. It’s a five letter word with double letter sounds. Once the children have learnt their phonics and double letter sounds, saying this kind of word will be easier. So do not say to them: “suh - huh - a - ruh - kuh “

Your students should be able to see that “s” and “h” together produces a “sh” sound and that “a” and “r” produces an “ar” sound. So the correct pronunciation is really: “shuh - arrr - kuh “ … and saying it quickly should produce the word: “shark”.

Teaching numbers Teaching numbers can be fun for children, especially when done as a game. It can appeal to children’s competitive nature when they want to be the person who knows the highest number.

A good game to play that encourages children to learn counting is to start at 1 and go round in a circle with 2 , followed by 3 and so on. If a student doesn’t know the number they are out. In the end two students will be left battling it out. See how far they can go!

2 . How to teach structures

It’s important to teach basic structures to build up the children’s confidence and competence in communicating.

10

Here are some examples: Hello Wave and smile. Say the word with warmth and vigour. The children will easily understand and respond.

What is it? This is useful for eliciting vocabulary and when combined with gesture students will easily understand it. You can use pictures, flash cards or realia to elicit vocabulary. Encourage the children to ask you and to ask each other. Soon they will be asking you “What is it?” for all manner of things.

Who is it? One of the mistakes children will make is applying the question form “What is it?” to people. This creates the need to teach “Who is it?” which can be practised by using pictures of famous people or TV characters that they will know.

Let’s have a closer look at some structures and consider how you might teach them to your young learners:

What's your name? You will need to teach this in your first class. The tone of your voice and the intonation will convey to the children that you are asking a question. Tell them your name and ask them theirs. If they have difficulty comprehending, get them to ask you the question. When you reply with your name write it on the board. They should get the gist of what you are saying. Get the students in the class to start practising immediately by getting them to ask each other.

If your name is unusual in the students’ culture, they may fail to recognise it as a name. In that case, you may like to use a puppet or toy whose name is familiar to your students. For instance, if they know P inocchio, hold it and say in a thin voice "My name is P inocchio" emphasising "Pinocchio". That should make it clear that the character is introducing himself. Then point to yourself and repeat the introduction in your own voice emphasising your name in the same way.

What colour is it? Show various objects that are red and say ‘The pen is red’, etc. O nce you have shown enough objects that are the colour red (someone’s jumper, a coat, parts of a picture) it will soon become clear that you are speaking about the colour. Then ask the question ‘What colour is it?’ and answer it ‘It’s red’. Then ask again and prompt your students to answer. Do the same with other colours.

11

Where do you live? This is a more difficult concept. You will need to teach the idea of house… my house… my home… I live here. Also younger students may not know their address, so decide how much they should tell you. Compare the following dialogues:

“Where do you live?” “I live in Madrid.”

“Where do you live?” “I live in Masumoto Apartment, Room 6, 2 -5, 1-chome, Higashi-Tokaichi, Miyoshi-shi,

Hiroshima-ken, Postal Area 7 2 8 , Japan."

Some young students will be able to cope well with this. Remember to praise them for what they can manage.

How old are you? You can introduce this question a few lessons into the course. You could introduce this at the same time as numbers. When you have taught numbers 1 – 10, you can ask them, “How old are you?” Be patient with your young learners, especially when they are counting.

Young students will be familiar with people’s jobs from their own culture and from television.

What does he/she do? Occupations can easily be shown on flashcards by the way the person in the picture is dressed and what he/she is doing. Be sure to include a mixture of men and women in your pictures, not only for political correctness, but also to present equal practice for the personal pronouns “he” and “she”.

Note that you are introducing the auxiliary verb “do” and the use of the personal pronouns “he” and “she”.

Teach the question and the answers: “What does he (or she) do?” He’s a postman. He’s a window cleaner. She’s a shopkeeper. He’s a doctor. She’s a baker.

Begin with occupations that are easy to identify. Perhaps they already know the word ‘teacher’ so start with it.

12

The Present Continuous The present continuous tense is sometimes called the present progressive tense. In order to teach this effectively, you’ll need pictures of people doing things. You can also mime an action and get your students to guess what you are doing, but first you need to help your students understand the concept of a ‘doing’ verb. Take a few moments to think about what kind of pictures you could create for the following activities: Swimming Standing Sitting Sleeping Studying P laying football (or any other popular sport)

Get the children to tell you what they enjoy doing. It doesn’t matter that they don’t know all the vocabulary yet. Remember that you are creating a need in the students. You are creating the gap – which you can fill with the necessary vocabulary. This is the art of being a good teacher.

13

IV. Teaching the skills to young learners

1. How to teach writing

In each lesson you need to encourage your young learners to do some writing. This is a good thing to do at the end of the class when you need to settle the children down after games and activities that may have included lots of running around. Start doing this from your very first class. After introducing the five vowel phonics and showing the children the letters 'a, e, i, o, u', get the children to practise writing them.

Encourage the students to buy exercise books that have special lines in them for writing. These look a little like four-line musical staves. The letters c, m, n, r, s, v, w, x and z and the vowels will fit between the two middle lines. The letters b, d, f, h, k, l, and t will touch the top line The letters g, j, p, q and y will touch the bottom line.

Have an alphabet frieze in the classroom with both upper and lower case so that the children see the letters regularly. From the very first class show that there are two ways of writing each letter: upper case letters (capitals) and lower case (small) letters.

Encourage the children to write neatly. Use the board to show them where on the page to start writing the letters and where to finish. P ractice will give your young learners confidence. Give them plenty of praise for their achievements.

2. How to teach speaking

Almost every activity that you do in the classroom should involve children speaking English.

When you teach a structure, give every child an opportunity to say it individually and chorally. Give them an opportunity to use it in pair work. Get some pairs to come to the front of the class to demonstrate.

Throwing a ball A good example of a game is where children sit in a circle and throw a ball to each other. As someone catches the ball they need to say a target word or structure and then toss it to someone else.

This can be done with individual words or with short conversations. As the teacher, you can make encouraging sounds and give them plenty of praise.

14

Filling the gaps Use running commentaries and get students to complete the gaps. You can use exaggerated pauses for fun and effect.

For example, as you pick up a red and blue pen you can say, “I need a red _____ and a _____ _____ .” Get the children to fill the gaps and show your pleasure when they get it right.

When you give a pen to students ask them what they need. Wait for a complete sentence: “I need a green pen.” If they can’t do it, help them, “I need a _____ _____.”

Once children have some basic vocabulary, you can teach a variety of sentence beginnings that children can easily finish: I like …I saw …I ate …

Adding words Use these simple sentence structures in spoken games. For example, use cards with pictures of animals. The first child turns over a card and makes a sentence. “I saw a dog.” The next childturns over a card and adds the information. “I saw a dog and a cat.” The next child continues, “I saw a dog, a cat and a rabbit.” See how long they can sustain it. Make sure they have fun with it.

Drills, chants and rhymes Use them periodically in the classroom with everyone chanting/singing along. If you can sing or play an instrument, put it to music.

Have you got a pen? Have you got a pen? Yes, here you are. Yes, here you are.

Have you got a ruler? Have you got a ruler? Yes, here you are. Yes, here you are.

Have you got a _____?

Keep it fun, keep it simple and make sure that all of the children feel that they are being successful.

To be successful, children need to enjoy their lessons and need to feel that they can communicate in English. Give them lots of praise and encouragement. This can be in the form of

15

a smile, a nod, a gold star, a stamp on the hand or a “well done”. Use eye contact to reassure them, especially for a hesitant child.

It’s good to build an environment where only English is used. Even if you understand the child’s first language, pretend you don’t. You might want to introduce an English speaking puppet or mascot. You can use the puppet to help the child express their idea in English.

16

V. Discipline in the classroom

It can be a joy to teach young learners who behave well and make an effort to learn what you teach. It can be frustrating when you are faced with a rowdy crowd of misbehaving children.

Some children can be naturally boisterous and noisy. Others can be quiet as mice and they can have difficulty in expressing themselves in a class using their own native language, let alone a strange and foreign language. You need to have a relaxed and fun atmosphere in your class without it descending into confusion and chaos. This is something that will only come from your own experience as a teacher. It all depends on the class you are teaching.

One class may be full of young children who are quite serious and want to spend time learning English. Other children just want to play and have fun. Some children won’t want to be in your class, because they lack any incentive to learn or are just plain bored. Occasionally you will come across children who want to cause trouble.

You will seldom come across badly behaved delinquent children. If your classes are fast paced, interesting, with a wide variety of activities and games, you shouldn’t have many problems with discipline.

How to prevent discipline problems from occurring?

From the outset of your class you need to have set rules – things students can and can’t do - you need to be firm about this from when you begin teaching them. The school where you work will have its own guidelines on what is and what is not permissible in your classes.

When teaching any subject, by far the most effective way of doing this is to create the need before filling it. Getting our students to try to find the way to communicate with us as teachers themselves gives them the desire to learn and find out. You can tell your students what to say, but it is far better to let them find out themselves.

One major rule in your class should be that your young learners can only speak English – not their own language. It is up to you, and the school you work for, how far you want to enforce that.

What happens when you have a child in your class who is particularly naughty and continually disrupts your class, maybe even inciting the other children to misbehave?

You must be firm and show your displeasure at this behaviour. Whatever happens do not get angry. Do not shout or scream and never hit a child even if he or she attacks you first.

How much does the child understand you? For example could you tell the child that you will need to discuss their behaviour with the child’s parents? And if they don’t have enough English

17

to understand that, perhaps an administrator from the school will tell the child in his or her own language.

If things get really serious and the child continues to disrupt your class you will need to talk to the Principal or the Director of the school. Perhaps one of the parents will be invited to observe your class to see the situation for themselves. Perhaps the child will be removed from the class or even if necessary removed from the school.

18

VI. No learning without fun, no fun without learning

The majority of your classes with young learners should be spent playing games and doing fun activities. However, you must have a reason for the game or activity. There has got to be a purpose behind the activity.

A good motto to remember when teaching children is this: There should be no learning without fun. There should be no fun without learning.

1. Games and activities

Slam is a game designed to help new learners identify letters (reading) and their sounds(listening).

The rules Put a few flash cards on the table, perhaps pictures of nouns. Tell the students to put their hands on their heads. Show by example and they will imitate you. Call out the name of the noun (for example, apple, book or cat). The student who touches the card first with his or her hand gets to keep the card. It counts as one point.

The game The group of cards gets smaller and smaller until there are just two or three left. When there are just a few, call out some false names (i.e. nouns that have already been called).

If a student makes a mistake by touching one of the cards on the table, take one of his or her cards away. Count up the number of points each student has and make a running total for your lesson. At the end of the lesson give a small prize to the overall winner.

Variations Here are four variations:

1. Turn the cards over so that the word – not the picture – is showing. 2 . Try this game with phonics and double-letter sounds 3 . Try saying to the children, “hands on shoulders” or “hands on ears”. This will get them to

learn the parts of the body. Remember that they will learn by imitating you, so be clear. 4. You could assign points to each card. Some flash cards could be worth two or even three

points. You could prepare some flash cards with mystery points. Perhaps some cards have minus points. Children are naturally competitive and inventive. You can ask your young students which cards should have which points.

19

Developing the game To cut down on teacher talking time and encourage the student participation, let the students take turns in being teacher. They will have to decide which part of the body to start off with and what noun, phonic or double-letter sound they choose. This becomes a speaking exercise for the one in charge. Make sure all the students have a go at being teacher.

Extras On special days (i.e. days when you can afford it) you could award sweets or chocolate to the winners. Make sure this is acceptable with the school first, of course.

Hide and seek is similar to Slam. This time, get all the children together in the centre of the class and tell them (and show them) to close their eyes. Then quickly distribute the cards around the classroom in different places. When you call out the name, the students have to run around frantically looking for the card. This is a great game to play when you feel the students need to wake up or if you feel they are becoming bored or restless.

Other options for children’s classes include: Hangman Bingo Pictionary Charades Twister Simon says I spy

When planning games and activities take the following tips into consideration: 1. Always explain an activity using an example rather than words. 2 . Vary the number of activities in a lesson. You could be looking at 10 –12 activities in a 1-

hour lesson. 3 . Be flexible! You may prepare 12 activities, but only use 6! It will depend on the students

that day. 4. Don’t assume what you like is what the students will like. Be sensitive to their likes and

keep a close eye on how the activity is running. 5. Just because an activity is fun doesn’t mean that it is useful. In your preparation think how

much the activity gets the students to practice their newly acquired English sounds, words or phrases by listening, reading, writing or speaking.

6. Finally, how much Teacher Talking Time (TTT) is there and how much Student Talking Time (STT) is there?

20

2. Planning an interesting lesson

Usually you will want to have between 10 – 12 activities for a one-hour class with your kids: Each activity should last about 5 mins. Try not to do an extended activity with children, as they get bored very easily. Occasionally you will find a class that is very mature and has a good attention span. If your young learners want to continue doing an activity for longer than 5 mins, adjust

your lesson plan accordingly.

Here are some useful points to take into account when structuring your lessons: A lesson should start with a revision of the previous lesson. After introducing the new language to the students make sure all the students have

understood correctly before getting them to do practice activities. A practice activity can be a game. Make the activities simple, no complicated instructions needed. Activities should be achievable and provide the chance for the students to build

confidence in new language. Always prepare to be flexible in your plans. Have “ If Time” activities planned in case you get to the end of your lesson with 10

minutes to spare.