TEACHING ENGLISH FOR CHILDREN
Creating Learning Environment For Young Language Learners
1. Anak Agung Ayu Made Liniasari NIM 1711031075
2. Luh Amay Suwiantini NIM 1711031088
Class: 7F
Group: 2
Dosen Pengampu Mata Kuliah:
I Gede Wira Bayu, S.Pd., M.Pd.
PROGRAM STUDI PENDIDIKAN GURU SEKOLAH DASAR
JURUSAN PENDIDIKAN DASAR
FAKULTAS ILMU PENDIDIKAN
UNIVERSITAS PENDIDIKAN GANESHA
SINGARAJA
2020
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Creating Learning Environment For Young Language Learners
I. Listening & Speaking
This course discusses how to establish the welcoming learning environment
for young learners and encourage Early childhood professionals to do some
leading activity in teaching Listening and speaking. This courses emphasis two of
English skills: how to maximize How to Maximize Young Learner's speaking. In
the exersices, most of activities given is case study. So, the students is allowed to
think critically in group discussion.
A. Detail of Material
1. Creating an environment for Young Language learners
A caring environment in which children feel secure and valued will allow
them to express their thoughts, feelings and understanding. The classroom
environment should promote language as a tool for learning across the
curriculum. Teachers need to provide an environment which promotes active
listening and purposeful talking, well designed writing and compherensive
reading.
2. Establish a welcoming early learning environment
Establish a welcoming environment by: reflecting the linguistic and
cultural diversity of all children in such things as classroom posters, pictures,
props, tabletop toys, games, storybooks, media resources, musical
instruments and foods served in the classroom providing opportunities for
family and community members to share experiences with children in the
classroom in their home language well as in English providing learning
experiences such as field trips and other community outings to places where
children and families can learn about the cuiture and history of themselves
and others.
3. Encourage children to play
Play is the cornerstone activity for social, cognitive and language
development in children from two-and-a-half to five-years-old. The
relationship between language development and play is two-way: Language
makes it possible for children to adopt roles, and to negotiate the rules and
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goals of play. Play fuels development through imagination and symbolic
functions. Symbolic functions are the ability to understand that objects,
actions, words and people can stand for something else. Symbolic functions
are at the core of pretend play and form the foundation for conceptual
thinking, literacy and numeracy. For young children learning a new language,
play provides a safe space to try out new words.
B. How to Maximize Young Learner's Listening
The nature of listening
Garvie (1999) stated that 'Listening is an active not a passive operation."
Arnold (2012 : 1) Furthernore Arnold emphasis three things the nature of
listening :
a) The importance of understanding this concept of listening being an
active engagement. That is, as a listener, the mind is actively searching
for meaning.
b) The importance of what Krashen calls 'comprehensible input' (CI) or
that 'we acquire when we understand what people tell us or what we
read, when we are absorbed in the message.' Individual progress is
dependent on the input containing aspects of the target language that
'the acquirer has not yet acquired, but is developmentally ready to
acquire.
This seems to imply the importance of ensuring that the language level is
matched to the learners, which means teachers must understand their learners'
abilities. Krashen advises that acquisition proceeds best when 'the acquirer's
level of anxiety is low and self-confidence is high.' This seems to enforce the
importance of making the learning environment in our classrooms non-
threatening.
Learners get many things trough listening. When learners have the
opportunity to listen to listening materials, then teachers should expose
students to listening to English as much as possible. Therefore, listening skills
become very crucial emphasis in the teaching of English to young learners.
a) Teachers or tapes first?
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One of the most frequently asked questions teachers have is whether their
learners should listen to them or the tapes first. When teachers focus on
classroom interaction teachers can use their talks to deliver the tasks and
engage students to the designed activities. Teachers can present the new words
and patterns in the form of puzzlesDictation
b) Dictation
Dictation exercise is always an important technique of teaching listening
because it trains students' comprehension in differing English sounds.
Dictation doesn't have to be dull and boring in which teachers simply state the
words and students write the words in their notebooks, it can be so much fun
and interesting if we apply it in language games.
c) Stories
It is a wonderful technique to teach, English through stories. Teachers
can read it to children from storybooks, memorize the stories then tell it to
children, or play it on a tape. There are some activities that teachers can
involve when they are telling stores. These activities are designed to engage
students in the story telling time and to avoid a teacher-dominated classroom
activity. The activities are:
a. The children draw characters or scenes from the story.
b. Teachers tell the story with puppets, children then retell the story with
their own puppets.
c. Children arrange pictures from the scene of the story, or touch/jump
on the correct pictures as teachers tell the story. This activity can also
be modified by asking students to guess what the story will be by
arranging pictures from the scene before teachers tell them the story.
d. Each child has a word card. When her word is mentioned in the story,
she has to do something about it, like raising her card, make funny
noise, or put up her hand.
e. The teacher stops sometimes during the story to ask students what
they think is going to happen next.
d) Total Physical Response (TPR)
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TPR is another technique that teachers often used in classroom. In this,
teachers give instruction like stand up, sit down, walk slowly, point to the
door, point to the windows, and so on and students do as instructed.
e) Songs
Children keep songs in their heads, sing them after class, hum them on
the way home, and sing them at home. They like the singing activity and
songs provide many opportunities to get new words and to acquire the model
pronunciation.
C. How to Maximize Young Learner's Speaking
1. Teacher's Preparation
We began with the question, "Who is the most important person in
theclassroom?", and answered, "The student is the most important
person,because the university and the teacher are there to serve the student's
need tolearn, just as the hospital is there to treat the patients, or the police to
protectthe security of the citizens."
2. Student's motivation
Encourage students to spend time speaking to you. Be mindful of how
much time you arespeaking versus your student: keep tutor talk time to a
minimum and increase student talk time.
D. Strategies and Approaches Social Conventions In Speaking Skill
Children will learn how to develop friendships, have conversations, give and
receive information, share materials and ideas and show respect and consideration
as they interact with others. The following experiences will assist children to
develop appropriate and effective social conventions.
1. Conversation
2. Partner Work
3. Talking Partner
4. Role-Play
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II. Reading and writing
Reutzel and Clark (2011) explain that the physical arrangement and
organization of a classroom can be powerful and supportive effective literacy
instruction. Literate environmental shoul motivate student and emphasize the
importance of speaking, reading, and writing.
1. Reading
Reading is a fundamental skill for leaners, not just forlearning but for life.with
reading being define as “…… the ability to draw meaning from the printed page
and interpret this information appropriately”.
Literacy leads to literacy development awareness. Reading itself build on oral
language levels and key factors that influence. Reading skill development include
the ability to comprehend and use both listening and speaking skills because you
need to :
Hear a word before you can say it
Say a word before you can read it
Read a word before you can write it
What this tells us is that young learners need a firm foundation in auditory
and oracy skills before they can become proficient readers and writers of any
language. Learning to read and then to write means the young learner has to link
what they have heard or spoken to what they can see (read) and produce (write).
A. How To Explore Reading With Young Learners
1) Phonics
This approach is based on letters and sounds. Basically, we teach the pupils the
letters of alphabet, and the combination of letters. Although phonics can become
very complicated as all the pronounciation rules are introduced, it can be a very
useful way into reading for those learners who are not familiar with the roman
alpabhet or who do not have a one to one relationship between letters and sounds
in their own written language. It is not recommended as the main way into reading
for those pupils who are already reading in their own language using the Roma
alphabet, and it should not be taugh to pupils who are learning to read using
phonics in their own language – this could lead to great confusion in
pronounciation.
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2) Look and Say
This approach is based on word and phrases and makes a lot of use of flash
card. It is usual to start by teaching everyday words shich are already familiar to
the children. The teacher shows the children repeat at word. This happens several
times with each word. The introduction of the word only takes a short time , and
goes quite quickly, so the teacher may spend five minutes of thirty minute lesson
on four new words. Thera are a lot of word recognition games which can be done
at this stage- matching word and pictures, pointing to the object on the card,
guessing which card teddy has picked out of the hat and so this approach
encourages recognition of a range of words and phrase before ‘reading’ a text.
3) Whole Sentence Reading
Here the teacher teaches recognition of whole phrase and sentence which have
meaning in them selves. This is often means a stor which the children read for the
first time themselves after the whole text is familiar to them. The words are not
presented in isolation, but as whole phrase or sentence. Since we think that
reading for meaning should be encouraged as soon as possible, we will look at
this approach in more detail below.
4) Language Experience Approach
This approach to reading is based on the child’sspoken language. The teacher
writes down a sentence for the child to read which is based on what the child has
said. For example:
a. This is me
b. My sister is nine. She is in class 3F
c. This is a post card from my uncle in Milan
Again, since we think that this is a good.pupil-centred approach to reading, we
will go into it more detail below.
5) Semantic
Being able to ‘decode’or read aloud is not useful on it’s own the symbolscarry
meaning and so young learners need to be taugh how to ‘encode’ the symbols and
visuals in order to find out the message being shared
6) Syntactics
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In the same way that every language has diffences in symbols, sothey have in
the ‘nuts and bolts’ or arrangement of their symbols.the grammar or syntax of
language is best ‘acquired’ in the krashen sense. Rather than ‘learnt’ explicitly.
Acquisition will occur thourgh multiple exposures to language usage in different
context. Dissecting language is not very useful to a young learner, however, some
simple metalanguage from the age of 10 years old upward can be helpful,
identifying nouns, verb, adjectives, adverb. Articles, pronouns, and word order.
The reason being that there may be difference between the English and being
helped to ‘notice’ these differences can help. A helpful publication to find out
differences between 22 language and English.
B. Developing Literacy
Cameron (2001) give a very useful list of ideas for creating a ‘ literate
environment in the classroom’ as this may be the only place young learners see
print in the foreign language. This lis includes :
a. Labels
Labeling childrens trays, desk,coat hooks, as well as furniture and object
around the classroom and school
b. Posters
Colourful posters are especially eye-catching which could include a rhyme that
is bering learnt,advertising something, reading, cleaning teeth.
c. Motivation
Ask yur learners to bring in materials they enjoy reading whether it is football
result, recipes orsong lyrics, use thes as a springboard for discussion and
reading.
d. Make it pusposeful
If learning food lexis, bring in packets/tins of food, read where differen kind of
food originate from, and classify them by country or by noun basis
(sountable/uncountable).
Extensive reading is where learners read a lot of easy material in the new
language. They choose their own material and read it indepently from the teacher.
This develops confidence in their abilities and promotes an enjoyment of reading
for pleasure.
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2. Writing
Writing can be engaging, interesting and inspiring activity for young learners.
Children are active learners and thinker (Piaget 1965), learn through social
interaction and learn effectively through scaffolding by more able other, who can
be adults or peers.collaborative and well-planned writing tasks encourage the
context for all of these characteristics to be fully exploited in the young learner
classroom.
Writing is a complex skill to develop and master, focusing on both the end
product and the steps to arrive there.writting skills only develop when young
learners are taugh how to write and are given opportunities to practices these skills
and strategies.
Good writing skills are based on good reading skills, you need to recognize word
in order to write and use them comprehensibly (linse 2005)
a. Many young learners will not have fully developed their own writing skills,and
these strategies may not necessarily transfer to writing in English.
b. Writing allows young learners to practise new vocabulary and structures
c. It allow for a high degree of personalization and creativity
d. It provides young learners to take risk and try out new language, with more
“thingking time”
e. Writing skill equip young learners with a solif base for future development and
learning.
f. A focus on writing tasks in the classroom createsvariety and caters for different
learning styles
g. Teacher can diagnose learners strengths and areas to develop in terms of
vocabulary, structure, spelling etc.
h. Focusing on this area can instill the joy of writing from an early age.
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A. Writing as a Product
The end goal is an authentic task. Writing to inform, to thanks etc. success is
gauged by the accuracy of the content and accuracy of the text. Accuracy
focuses on :
1. Grammar and vocabulary
2. Spelling and punctuation
3. Legibility and appropriate genre conventions
Content focuses on :
1. Conveying information successfully to the reader
2. Providing enough detailed information
3. Logically ordering ideas
4. Using appropriate register
5. Originality of ideas
B. Consideration for classroom writing
Here are some tips for encouraging more engaging writing tasks for young
leaners. Think about how you can employ these with your own young leaner
groups and try them out.
a. Encourage collaboration between young leaners and provide opportunities
during thought-showering, making notes, planning, revising etc
b. Provide visuals, or ask the learners to draw their own pictures to provide the
content for the tasks
c. Topics should be engaging for your young leaners relatable and
instrinsically motivating.write about what they know, games, friends,
favourite activities etc
d. Look at writing tasks from a different perspective rather than writing about
their daily routine, they could write about their pet’s daily routine, their
pet’s favourite activities, food, etc
e. Let young learners choose their own characters to write about
f. Set challenging but achievable tasks
g. Respond to written ideas, not just language
h. Encourage pride in the presentation of their writing you learners can draw,
annotate.
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It is teacher’s responsibility to develop writing tasks for young learners that
are enjoyabke, full of practice, meaningful, purposeful, social and supported.
Challengug your learners and exploiting collaborative opportunities all
combine to provide a learning environment where writing is both valued and
enjoyed.
C. Writing is a Good Thing
even if there are difficulties in wirting in the foreign language, it is still a
useful, essential, integral and enjoyable part of the foreign laguange lesson.
a. Its adds another physical dimentionto the learning process han are added to
eyes and ears
b. It lets pupils express their personalities, even guided activites can include
choices for the pupils
c. Writing activities help to consolidate learning in the other skill
areas.balanced activities train the language and help aid memory.practice in
speaking freely help when doing free writing activities, reading helps pupils
to see the rules of writing and helps build up their language choices.
d. Particularly as pupils progress in the language, writing activities allow for
conscious development of language. When we speak, we don’t always
needto use a large vocabulary because our meaning is often conveyed with
the help of the situation.lots of structure in the language appear more
frequently in writing, and perhaps most important of all, when we write we
have the time to go back and think about what we have written.
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