Monday 20 December 2010

Teaching English in Elementary Schools

In responses to the needs of developing human resources, the teaching of English as a foreign language has been extended to reach the elementary school level. This means that students learn English much earlier as they are young learners. The hope is that students will get more exposure to English and as a consequence, the expectation to get a better learning is more open. Actually, teaching English for young learners is guiding and facilitating young learners in aging 9-15 years old, for their activities in learning, knowing, understanding, and comprehending ideas, attitudes values , skills, and information of English using tricks and strategies which will be used in changing and redefining their thought forward their daily surrounding situation as a foreign languages learners. The teaching of English in elementary schools has been serious concerns of many educational stakeholders, particularly in terms of the lack of quality assurance apparatus. However, when it comes to learning classes, several students feel that learning English is hard to learn. As a result, they still have problems which are the students have very short attention spans, forget things quickly, and may not be motivated. (http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/3-5.htm) This situation is certainly not expected to happen because this situation can make the process of learning stop. They are several ways or strategies for teachers to decrease these problems, three of which are clear: making learning English more fun, getting the students moving to motivating the students and playing games for the students.
The first challenge is about making learning English fun. Certainly, the process of learning will not happen if there is nothing to learn. This means that the teacher should dig up the ideas to teach the students. If you are teaching children how to introduce themselves, plan a bunch of shorter activities instead of one long one. Each activity should last about five to fifteen minutes maximum. Young children simply cannot pay attention for a longer period of time and will start fidgeting. For example if the children have a half hour time slot for English then the teacher should not spend more than 5-8 minutes of that half hour on coloring or cutting type activities. There are far better ways to impart a practical knowledge of English to the children if the teacher has limited time to do it. The teacher need a battery of games, activities, stories and ideas up the teacher sleeve so the teacher can stride into class looking forward to being rewarded by great results and happy faces.
Not only making learning English fun, getting the students moving constitutes the second challenge to the teacher. Movement is a vital component to motivating children. The best way to prevent children from zoning out is to get them up out of their seats at least once each class period. Even if you just require them to come up to you instead of you going to them for help, the movement can help get them out of the trance that they sometimes get from sitting in one spot too long. Grouping the children for study projects and activities helps as well. If you can, let them move the desks around or sit on the floor to change things up as well. Many games involve movement without the children needing to leave their seats, such as miming, moving certain body parts and passing things around as part of a game or race, for example: action race game, adjectival action and attention. This is a fun game using actions. Use action like jumping, hopping, clapping, running, etc. Have the students split into two teams and sit in lines with a chair by each team and one chair at the other end of the room. One student from each team stands next to their chair and the teacher calls an action, example “jump”. Student must jump to the chair on the other side of the room and back, sitting down in their chair students say “I can jump”. First one to do it gets their team a point. Therefore even teachers with large classes and no space to move can use this technique, albeit to a more limited degree.
The third way or strategy for the teacher to decrees the problems is playing games. Children learn through play. Oftentimes they don't even realize they are learning if they are enjoying the game. Just think children could sit there and fill out worksheet after worksheet or they could play an English game and learn the same concepts. When I say English games I'm talking about games that are specifically designed to teach language and vocabulary. For example, you could turn using vehicle vocabulary into a relay game where children need to pick a card with a word and then run to a box of vehicles (or a stack of pictures of vehicles) and bring the correct one his or her classmates. Here is another example: If you might normally give them a worksheet to write the correct verb next to the picture illustrating the action, have them instead practice their verbs by doing the action for the word you say or the word on a card that you hold up. Likewise, you could do the action and have them write down the word. You may access free samples of fun classroom games in the resource box below. When you play games, you can use points and competition as a motivator, but not for kids under six who may find the competition too stressful.
Based on explanation above, teaching English for elementary schools has severalIn my conclusion, the aim from the several ways or strategies for the teacher is try to help the students to decrease their problems and make their learning process joyful. For recommendation, these strategies can help the teacher and the students to learn English more fun. Finally and it is most importantly: Do not be afraid to try different methods. Be creative. ways or strategies for teacher to decrease these problems, three of which are making learning English fun, getting the students moving to motivating the students and play games for the students.
Written by
Umi Nadirotun N.

No comments:

Post a Comment