Teaching listening and speaking to young learners

 

Teaching listening and speaking to young learners

The skill of communicating in English in the global world today is considered one of the most required life skills. This growing need might be the cause for parents to send their young children to schools that provide English programs.

The implementation of TEYL in several countries is based on some rationales. English should start with an emphasis on listening and then speaking. these are two main skills to teach first because children often cannot read and write at all yet, or not with much confidence. Young learners need to start with plenty of listening practice, and opportunities to listen to rich input will naturally lead to speaking tasks. in this way listening and speaking can be truly integrated into the primary English classroom.

• Teaching Listening

Teaching young learners is really very challenging. Teachers are not only to understand methodologies but also have skill and teaching competencies.  How can teachers scaffold children’s listening comprehension and foreign language acquisition in the beginning stages?  More importantly, how  can children be taught to use the acquired language for meaningful communication in new contexts? First of all, teachers should understand listening as a complex interactive process in which meaning is being attached to sound and two-way communication is being achieved (Shin,2011). 

In order to foster the development of listening skills, teachers should include in their lessons a variety of listening activities. These activities should focus on developing micro-skills (described by Richards 1983, in Shin 2011) such as retaining language chunks in short-term memory, discriminating among the  English sounds, recognizing   English stress patterns,   reduced forms,   and grammatical word classes, patterns,  systems, and rules.   Listening micro-skills also involve distinguishing word boundaries and interpreting word order patterns, processing speech at different speeds of delivery,   detecting sentence components,   recognizing cohesive devices and communicative functions,  developing listening strategies using nonverbal clues to understand the meaning.

Listening strategies can be developed by encouraging young learners to guess from context and supporting their listening comprehension by using visuals, mime, and facial expressions. Demonstrating language by using realia in contexts that are of interest to children or personalizing a context can also be effective. Total Physical Response (TPR) activities have the power to immediately tell the teacher how successfully children have understood commands because children have to respond to them physically.   A very useful and engaging listening activity can be related to the teacher’s instructions for making an origami (paper folding) object; it can be a very simple one, but its potential for developing listening skills and engaging all children is great.

• Teaching speaking

    What we have to keep in mind constantly when teaching young learners is the fact that they are a  mixed class with varied abilities, motivations levels, expectations, knowledge, and different learning styles. Thus, we have to vary our approaches and offer as much opportunity as possible to make the whole class find a little something to 4hold on to, expand and grow. To develop speaking skills basically need a closer look and further discussion among the teachers of young learners so that they will find guidelines to lead students to get involved and interested in learning a foreign language. 

    There should be paid more attention when teachers of young learners apply the above-mentioned tools into their teaching practice i.e. that learners’ interaction as a way of learning. It means the teacher should emphasize and open as many chances as possible for the learners to practice pronouncing and speaking English either in the classroom or out of. To be able to use English in communication, children need to acquire the necessary vocabulary and structures.   In the beginning stages of language learning,   new vocabulary should be presented orally with the extensive support of pictures, drawings, puppets, realia, video, and/or mime, gesture, facial expressions, or acting out. Mimingdriving a car and presenting a picture of a car helps children grasp the meaning of drive and ’a a car’ extremely quickly. So that, it is suggested that the teacher of young learners prepares materials for teaching young learners in the course of their pre-service teaching   practice  i.e.  

Using a tape or a CD

Many textbooks for young learners offer shorter texts written as comics, introducing characters learners can relate to and through which they get to know the language, the culture, and the people of a certain country. Instead of simply following the text (with books either open or closed), it is suggested that the class be divided into various parts or teams (e.g. A and B, depending on the number of roles in the comics)and then the learners read with the tape. Choral reading has always proved a lot of fun and children are excellent at imitating, thus producing brilliant copies of the original. Do not forget to change roles after the text has been read a few times. Further on, as you see learners getting familiar with the topic and vocabulary, make them work in pairs. If they want to, they can also perform in front of the class – keep in mind that at an early age they are mostly extroverts and love showing off their English. 

Songs, Poems, Rhymes, and Chants

Throughout our   English lessons, students are learning to speak, express ideas, share opinions, and exchange information. Using songs, poems, rhymes, and chants is a wonderful way of making students sing/talk and at the same time (unconsciously) work at their grammar,   vocabulary,   pronunciation.   Try to include the above-mentioned activities by providing learners with those that require a total physical response, shortly known as  "TPR". Year by year, children get highly enthusiastic about songs like: “watermelon, watermelon, papaya-papaya, banana, orange juice” where (excessive)body movements are required.   Confidence   and   motivation   are   built   through   the process.