Teaching English To Young Learners - WordPress

1Teaching English to Young LearnersTEACHING SPEAKING ANDPRONUNCIATION TOYOUNG LEARNERSWEEK 5Lecturer: Rania Elmaj23/04/2015

Lecture Outline2 What is “speaking”?The importance of teaching speaking to younglearners.The development of speaking skills.Classroom Techniques and Activities.Techniques and Activities.10 Rules of Speaking in Young Learner Classes.The best ways of getting young learners involved inspeaking activities in an ELT classroom.What’s “pronunciation”?Teaching Pronunciation to young learners.23/04/2015

What is “speaking”?3 Speaking is the process of building and sharingmeaning through the use of verbal and non-verbalsymbols, in a variety of contexts. Speaking is a crucialpart of second language learning and teaching.Speaking, as it relates to young learners, is one way forthem to play, in this case, playing with words andsounds.According to Cook (2000) in Linse (2005), there aremany different ways that children play with words andlanguage, beginning with the tickling rhymes that theyhear as babies and continuing with other sorts of playwhich involve both the form and meaning of language.Play is vital and important aspect of child’sdevelopment and language is part of 23/04/2015that play.

The importance of teaching speakingto young learners4 Speaking is equally important in children’s overalllanguage development. It is the first output afterthe first input (Listening), long before they can write.Teachers who work with young learners recognizehow important it is for children to develop strongspeaking skills.Speaking is the way they communicate about whatthey feel or what they need, and also the way theiradults, such as parents and teachers, tocommunicate what is good and what is bad.23/04/2015

The development of speaking skills5 Young learners, since they are “young” and theirspeaking equipment has not yet developed perfectly,will probably have limitations in speaking.Young children learning English as a foreign languagedo not develop English – Language skills more readilythan older learners.However, they have a clear advantage when it comesto pronunciation if they begin learning English as aforeign or second language at an early age (Birdsong,1999). Nevertheless, there are some phonemes whichchildren have difficulty with.23/04/2015

Classroom Techniques and Activities6There are many techniques and activities theteachers can choose for their young learners. Thechoice should be based on the aims of the programcoupled with the learners’ stage of development. Brown (2001) stated 7 principles for designingspeaking techniques:1- Use techniques that cover the spectrum of learnersneeds, from language-based focus on accuracy tomessage-based focus on interaction, meaning, andfluency.2- Provide intrinsically motivating techniques. 23/04/2015

73- Encourage the use of authentic language inmeaningful contexts.4- Provide appropriate feedback and correction.5- Capitalize on the natural link between speakingand listening.6- Give students opportunities to initiate oralcommunication.7- Encourage the development of speaking strategies.23/04/2015

Techniques and Activities8 There are many techniques and activities thatteachers can use for their speaking classroom. Welive in, what Professor Kumaravadivelu describes as,post method era, where there is no such a thing asthe best method.It is the teachers’ decision to determine which kindof method that suits their students most. The teacherscan take a little bit of Audio-Lingual Method (ALM)and combine it with a little bit of CommunicativeLanguage Teaching (CLT) and create a newmethod, such as describe below.23/04/2015

(A) Games9 Play is a purposeful activity and games are part ofplaying. Games are a very appropriate teachingtechnique in the young learner classroom. There aremany kinds of games the teachers can create. Theexamples are Memory games, This and That, Roleplay, Guess games, etc.23/04/2015

I'm Going to the Supermarket(A language game)10 Skills: naming food items, listing items in alphabetical order, identifying initialssounds, recalling items in a seriesGroup Size: 2 to 36Prep Time: nonePlaying Time: 5-15 minutesInterest Level: ages 3 to adultAbility Level: beginner to lower intermediateChoose a student to begin. This student will say, "I'm going to the supermarket tobuy [food item beginning with "a"]." The next student will then say, "I'm going to thesupermarket to buy [food item beginning with "a" named by first student] and [fooditem beginning with "b"].Play continues, with each student recalling all previously mentioned items andadding another item in alphabetical sequence. If a student misses an item or cannotthink of an item to add, he or she is out. The last remaining student wins.If play continues after all letters have been exhausted, students repeat allpreviously named words, then add a new word beginning with "a" and continuethrough the alphabet once more. For example, "I'm going to the supermarket to buyapples and . . . zebra meat and apple juice . . . "23/04/2015

Close Your Eyes(A language game)11 Skills: Describing physical appearance; asking and responding to questions; visualdiscriminationGroup Size: 4 to 24Prep Time: nonePlaying Time: 5-20 minutesInterest Level: ages 3 to adultAbility Level: beginner to intermediateLanguage used: "Look at ." "Close your eyes!" colors, shapes, positions,articles of clothingGame: Choose a student to begin. Tell the student, "Look at ." Allow thestudent to examine the person or object for about five seconds, then direct thestudent, "Close your eyes!" After the student's eyes are closed ask him or her aquestion about the person or object examined. For example, you might ask, "Whatcolor is Andrew’s shirt?" or "Is there a box of crayons on my desk?" If the studentresponds incorrectly, direct him or her to open his or her eyes and inspect the objectfor five more seconds. Direct the student to close his or her eyes again and askanother question. Depending on class size, you may allow students up to three turns.If the student correctly answers the question, he or she chooses a player as well as aperson or object and asks the next question.23/04/2015

(B) Talking and Writing Box12 The Talking and Writing Box is made of pictures thatchildren have self-selected and are interesting to them.When children are asked to talk about the pictures on theirbox, they talk about things that are of interest to thembecause they have selected the pictures.When talking about their pictures, children becomeanimated because they are talking about something ofinterest to them. By using Talking and Writing Box, childrenare able to personalize the information that they share.Teachers can experiment with this kind of method. They canput the pictures or topics in the box and the students canchoose one that is interesting to them, or teachers can do itlike the example below:23/04/2015

13 What do you think the boy is doing?The teachers can show a funny picture, the funnier thebetter, and give students some multiple choices relatingto the language focus and also give them choice to givetheir own opinion.23/04/2015

10 Rules of Speaking in YoungLearner Classes141. Although it is a productive skill, the children may notfeel ready to produce oral language, so teachers andparents should be patient.2. Short practice activities can help students buildproductive language to use in discourse. Speaking startswith practicing drills, set phrases (junks and formulaicexpressions), repeating models, so it is important to usesuch activities to make them familiar with repetitivelanguage. However, the language should be usedmeaningfully in the classroom, not just in isolated chunks.23/04/2015

153. Children need experience of a range of discoursetypes to increase their skills, so the tasks designed for inclass use should be varied.4. The teachers should take into account thedevelopmental stages in L1, those in L2, and students’age to design the speaking activities.5. Correcting each and every mistake is discouraging andthey need help to acquire fluency. Before the speaking,we may teach them the necessary language and thevocabulary items to prepare them for the tasks.23/04/2015

166. Designing authentic activities, such as role-plays anddialogues based on real life conversations, motivates thestudents, so they willingly take the role of an imaginaryperson. However, the meaning and purpose of discourseneeds to be made comprehensible to the learners.7. The teachers should be aware of the problems younglearners may have while articulating phonemes. It isimportant not to ignore the pronunciation, intonation andstress: Using tongue twisters, mirrors, imitating nativespeakers in movies can be some of the useful activities.23/04/2015

178. Speaking is not an individual skill; they need to beencouraged to practice in pairs and in groups.9. A good speaking activity should involve allstudents not some of them.10. When the class is noisy in a speaking activity,trying to shout over children is not a good idea: Usingthe lights, symbols or music may help.23/04/2015

The best ways of getting young learnersinvolved in speaking activities in an ELTclassroom18 In an ELT classroom, children are sometimes shy and unwilling toparticipate in speaking activities. Nixon and Tomlinson suggest thatthe best way of getting young learners involved in speakingactivities is through use of songs, because musicalactivities (especially if they are accompanied with illustrations)can help children to feel relaxed and less anxious.Moving freely around the classroom, dancing or pointing will alsohelp students to memorise the words and their meaning.While communication activities should be fun in order to engageyoung learners, they should also be highly structured to giveyounger learners enough confidence to speak and communicate inEnglish. Working in pairs, for example, builds both student andcorrection autonomy: students can compare worksheets with minimalteacher interference and ask each other questions. It is important tokeep activities personal, e.g. asking about favourite colour or pastexperience.23/04/2015

19 With the help of mixed activities, such asdialogues, choral revision, chants, songs, poems andrhymes; students’ speaking abilities grow, theirpronunciation gets better and their awareness ofthe language improves.Using songs, poems, rhymes and chants is awonderful way of making students sing/talk and atthe same time (unconsciously) work at theirgrammar, vocabulary, pronunciation23/04/2015

What’s “pronunciation”?20 Pronunciation is an area of great difficulty for theuntrained EFL teacher. But, with a little training andpractice you can facilitate the improvement of yourstudents’ pronunciation almost as well as theseasoned professional. For our purposes here,“pronunciation” will include the concepts of stress,rhythm and intonation.23/04/2015

Teaching Pronunciation to younglearners21Rhymes, finger play, and chantsWe can select rhymes and finger plays that focus on a specific phonemes orsound or set of sounds to help children learn how to pronounce words correctly. Using mirrorsFor helping the young learners learn about their pronunciation, we can usemirrors in the class. The children who have difficulty with certain sounds oftendo not know how to form their lips and mouths in such a way as to correctlyarticulate the sounds.And the mirrors probably work so well because they give children anawareness of how easily they can adjust their pronunciation. Tongue twistersThey generally have the same phoneme repeated over and over again. It ishard to articulate the same sound over and over again. One of the tonguetwisters is how many peppers did Peter pick. Children adore tongue twistersbecause they perceive saying the sounds as a game or challenge. 23/04/2015

Chants22 Alliteration, wordplay and repetition in thischant. Great for helping children to developphonemic awareness23/04/2015