Teaching guidelines

CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG LEARNERS

In order to design an effective curriculum, syllabi and materials and to suggest appropriate pedagogical practices, the characteristics of the target group need to be taken seriously into consideration. The young learners’ characteristics and the processes through which foreign language learning takes place have been extensively studied. Thus, the EYL project team has taken into account the guidelines and suggestions that this previous research[1] has put forward and has accordingly adjusted them to the reality of the Greek state schools. More specifically, these are the guidelines and recommendations that have been taken into account:

1. Children need clear messages in order to understand and respond to them.

2. Children need space and time to learn a language.

3. Children learn a language by using it and communicating through it.

4. Children have different learning styles and preferences.

5. Children learn a language by listening to it and by playing with it.

6. Children need to listen to and have access to their mother tongue in the foreign language classroom.

7. Children learn various ways to attach meaning to language items and learn through them.

Language Activities Appropriate for Young Learners

Multimodal texts are more likely to attract the attention of younger learners, especially when they are motivated and encouraged to use their imagination in action (e.g. miming, movements, etc). Teachers can use rhymes, songs, games, storytelling, art and craft, DVDs with cartoons and whatever other activities can create a context that will help children understand and produce speech in the English language.

These are some sample types of educational activities that can be used with young learners:

• Poems and rhymes
• Songs
• Games
• Stories, myths and tales
• Visuals (flashcards)
• Action-oriented activities
• Art and craft
• CD-ROM & DVD-based activities

1. Children need clear messages in order to understand and respond to them.

Young children readily understand whatever relates to their own view of the world, regardless of how incomplete and limited it may be. Therefore the teacher needs to evaluate and design educational materials and activities in a way that takes into account the learners’ own perspective. A central issue is whether children are familiar with the topic and the type of activity at hand so that the target language that will be used to carry out the activity is meaningful to them.

2. Children need space and time to learn a language.

Children’s level of cognitive development is determined by their age, the amount and quality of knowledge, and the social experiences acquired. Consequently, in order to design and/or select appropriate activities, educators need to be aware of what their learners already know and what they can do. Further, if the learners’ enthusiasm and interest are to be sustained, teachers also need to cater for their short concentration span and for the fact that they can get very easily discouraged.

3. Children learn a language by using it and communicating through it.

Unlike adolescents or adults that have already acquired analytic and synthetic cognitive skills, very young children cannot think in an abstract fashion or deductively. They learn by ‘doing’ and by playing. Namely, very young children understand how language functions by using it, e.g. by using it to communicate with their peers, with imaginative heroes, with adults etc. (and not by being explicitly taught the rules underlying a certain linguistic system-teaching the metalanguage). So, the foreign language teacher should create the right environment for interaction and cooperation. Activities such as rhymes and songs help children notice the pronunciation of individual items or phrases, as well as the intonation and structure of sentences. Further, stories and fairy tales touch on topics that children are familiar with and can be used to enrich the foreign language input provided.

4. Children have different learning styles and preferences.

Not all people have the same experiences, abilities, skills and interests. Some understand and learn better by seeing, or by listening, while others by feeling, touching or by being physically involved. It is therefore important that the activities chosen by educators match their learners’ profile, their experiences, their abilities and their interests. It is also equally important to encourage learners that may have different learning profiles to participate in different types of activities.

5. Children learn by listening to language and by playing with it.

For young children, oral speech functions as a ‘tool’ which helps them keep in touch with language, both their own, and the foreign one. They also take pleasure in oral speech while listening to it, processing or repeating it, imitating the speaker’s intonation, pronunciation or facial expression. As young learners are still in the process of developing school literacy in their mother tongue, in any foreign language curriculum geared towards these learners oral speech not necessarily as the object of teaching but mostly as the medium in and through which learning takes place. It is through oral speech that children learn how to communicate. This does not mean that exposure to written discourse and graphemes cannot be beneficial for children. Indeed such exposure may beneficial for those learners who like to pay attention to written symbols and who better learn lexical items and phrases by connecting those items and phrases with their graphemic representation. Further, some learners take pleasure in noticing the graphemic representation of lexical items and phrases while listening to them. Young learners get excited when they are able to recognize lexical items and phrases during the narration of a story. It needs to be stressed though that the development of receptive and productive writing skills, and generally of school literacy, is not among the aims of the EYL curriculum.

6. Children need to hear and have access to their mother tongue in the foreign language classroom.

Unlike what was previously believed by researchers, who were influenced by the school of Behaviourism, we do not learn a foreign language in the same way that we acquire habits, namely through repetition. The linguistic system is not just a behavioural system. It is a complex meaning-laden system acquired in very complex ways. We learn a foreign language by comparing and contrasting it to the language or languages we already know. As research has demonstrated, the more languages we know, the more languages we can learn. Consequently, the use of the learner’s mother tongue is advisable and can be used as a means to teach a foreign language. By comparing languages, learners succeed in developing further their language awareness, which in turn assists their language learning.

There are several reasons why the use of Greek would be beneficial for all those Greek and non-Greek background children who attend the EYL programme. For example, it is only through the use of Greek that teachers can:

• give instructions on how learners can deal with an activity
• explain the rules of a game
• summarise a story or a song that learners will listen to
• explain individual words or phrases
• explain what they will have to do so that they feel secure in their environment.

Naturally, it is crucial for children to listen and get exposed to the foreign language and understand partially what is being said (that is, have some “comprehensible input”) so that they can get accustomed to it and gradually learn it. It needs to be stressed though that ruling out altogether the mother tongue from the EFL classroom is a practice that only serves those policies that aim to promote the development of the target language at the expense of the learners’ mother tongue.

7. Children learn various ways to attach meaning to language items and learn through them.

Language is not the only representation and meaning-laden system. The texts that need to be processed are not only linguistic but also multi-modal. Apart from the linguistic code that allows us to choose between oral or written communication, we also use other systems drawing on our visual -, audio - , tactile-, gestural -, or spatial representations. More specifically, we may use the visual system (visual representation), or the auditory system (auditory representation) which is comprised of music, sounds and naturally occurring speech. We may also use the tactile system (tactile representation) that consists of touching, smelling and tasting, the gestural system (gestural representation) that consists of body movement, facial expression, body posture etc. or the system that concerns spatial location and distance (spatial representation).

Although every cultural group makes use of all the aforementioned representation systems in order to express and communicate various meanings, the way these systems are used differs from one cultural group to another. For example, the gestures, sounds and pictures used to communicate meanings by Asian people are significantly different from those used to communicate meanings by people in Europe. However, even within Europe different cultural groups (i.e. Greek, British and Swedish people) use for example gesture and facial expression differently. Taking then into consideration that the representation systems are culturally defined, learners need to learn to understand how these systems ascribe meaning.

That is why when we engage in the process of learning a foreign language, particularly nowadays that most texts (both written and spoken) are multimodal, we also have to learn how to use all these different modes of communicating and expressing meanings. It has to be stressed though that all these different modes of meaning making that are acquired by children in their mother tongue from a very young age-also constitute very important means of learning foreign languages, i.e. in and though the use of pictures, gestures, songs or sounds, children can also learn how to talk in a foreign language. Various studies have shown that the use of multi-modal speech and the exploitation of different means of representation have a positive impact on language development, particularly as regards young children.

Here is a list of educational material that can be used with young learners:

• Poems and rhymes
• Songs
• Games
• Stories, myths and tales
• Visuals (flashcards)
• Action-oriented activities
• Art and craft
• CD-ROM & DVD-based activities