Hi,guys. Today I want to share about one of my
writings. Actually, this is my final examination on Essay Writing-1 subject. I
just want to share it because it is related with some tips for English
teachers who teach young learners. Enjoy it!
Nowadays, English has been
introduced to the young learners starting from the early age in Indonesia. This
can be seen from increasing number of schools which offer English classes at
the elementary school level. Most people believe that the earlier children
learn English, the better it will be. Teaching English for young learners
should be well handled if it is to be successful. Teacher of English for young
learners needs to have a good understanding of how students think and operate.
Therefore, there are three ways to create the effective teaching of English to
young learners such as: English teacher should know how children learn and how
to facilitate children learning English as a foreign language.
It
is necessary for English teacher to know how children learn from the world
around them, so that teacher could provide conducive environment for children
to learn English, and the effective teaching could be formed. There are
a few important things that teacher should know about how children learn.
Firstly, children learn from direct experiences. Children
learn and create knowledge base from direct experiences: from what they can
capture using their senses, and from what they experience directly. For
example, rather than teaching them about their hobbies during the winter, it
will be better if English teacher asks the children to talk about their hobbies
during the rainy season because the children did not experience the winter
season. Secondly, children learn from involving in physical activities. The
research, led by Charles Hillman, a professor of kinesiology and community
health and the director of the Neurocognitive Kinesiology Laboratory at
Illinois, suggests that physical activity may increase students’ cognitive
control – or ability to pay attention – and also result in better performance
on academic achievement tests. For example, they will learn better if they do
things in English such as creating posters with captions in English. Thirdly,
children have short attention span. Children
can only concentrate about 15 to 20 minutes on the topics that they are working
on. Therefore, it will be better if English teacher uses various teaching
techniques for shorter periods of time because it could avoid boredom to
students. For example, there are various teaching techniques which can be used
in the lesson for different periods of time such as quiet/noisy exercises and
individual/pair work/group work/whole class activities. Therefore, English
teacher of the young learners could create the effective way of teaching if
he/she could build topics and contexts of learning that are relevant to the
learners based on his/her knowledge about how children learn.
Besides
knowing how children learn, English teacher should be able to do things to facilitate
children learning English as a foreign language. In order to make the
teaching-learning process runs well, the teacher should be able to prepare the
educational facilities in the classroom. For example, the teacher could provide
the room with functional reading and writing materials in English such as
interesting pictures, photos, magazines, posters, and other visual media so
that functionality of English is visible to the children in the classroom.
Besides that, he/she can also give music, songs or audio stimuli for auditory
learners and invite students to make physical movement (drawing and dancing)
for kinesthetic learners. If the students’ learning environments are equipped
with enough educational facilities, they will develop the English language
skills well through different ways of learning such as auditory, visual and
kinesthetic.
In
brief, English has been taught starting from the early age in Indonesia,
especially in elementary schools, as the development of the world globalization
which demands English skills for all people in the world. In teaching English
to the young learners, English teacher should know about the criteria of
effective teaching, so that he/she will make the students learn better and have
a good comprehension of English as a foreign language. To create an effective
teaching of English to the young learners, English teacher should not only know
how children learn, but he also need to consider about providing adequate
facilities in the classroom. As time goes by, we will have to wait and see how
the way of teaching affects the development of English language on the young
learners in Indonesia.
No comments:
Post a Comment