Ingredients for Good ELT

In order to teach young learners effectively, it is important to take into account different considerations, such as the characteristics of young learners, they way in which children learn new information in general, and how they learn a new language, in particular.

Children are energetic and physically active, spontaneous, curious, imaginative, and they have short attention spans. As a consequence of this, teachers should try to engage children with fun activities that arouse their curiosity and imagination through teaching about interesting topics, such as exotic animals and plants, food, music, holidays, etcetera, and also through role plays and drama games, which allow them to use their imagination and pretend they are someone or something else. Teachers should also use children`s natural tendency to be physically active by incorporating kinesthetic activities that encourage young learners to move around, for example, the TPR (Total Physical Response) method connects language to movement. Sometimes, after concentrating very hard on an activity, teacher could give students a break to move their bodies around with some TPR activity, or even a mental break (also called “brain break”). Furthermore, teachers also need to provide opportunities for children to connect new information and language to themselves, since they are egocentric and they have difficulty perceiving things from another person`s point of view. However, children are social and they love to play games with each other. So, teachers should have a balance of activities that allow students to have various types of interaction (in pairs, in groups, as a whole class, or individually).

According to Piaget, children learn through their own individual actions and exploration. It is really important to create opportunities for children to learn by doing and to learn by interacting with their environment. Interacting with realia (real-life objects) allow students to connect the language they are learning to their everyday life. Apart from learning by interacting with their environment, children also learn by interacting with adults. The adults` role is very important in a child`s learning process: children need support and scaffolding by the teacher. Teachers must prepare their lessons by examining every task very carefully, taking into account the students` level of English and their cognitive development. Keeping children “on task” (engaged in a particular activity and working productively) is an important part of the scaffolding process, since children need reminders for what they are doing and why.

Success in English language teaching also depends on the characteristics of the classroom environment. Children may use similar processes to acquire a native language (L1) and a foreign language (L2), however, the environment for L1 and L2 acquisition can be quite different. In the L1 environment, children are surrounded by their native language: it is spoken and used in various contexts all around the child. This constant source of meaningful exposure to language in authentic contexts helps children acquire language naturally and quickly. The challenge for teaching English as a second language is to create an English-speaking classroom environment and use the language as much as possible. The language must be meaningful and used in context so as to motivate children to participate in class and learn. Children must be given not only lots of meaningful and comprehensible input, but also opportunities to produce meaningful and comprehensible output. Children will learn the language through lots of authentic and meaningful exposure to it.

Here I have mentioned the main considerations to give effective English instruction to young learners. To conclude, we can say that effective English instruction in the EFL classroom should include kinesthetic activities, songs, rhymes, drama activities, exotic topics, role plays, stories, movies, pictures, posters, poems, activities in groups and individual activities, realia, storytelling, among others, but always planning every lesson bearing in mind the characteristics of young learners and how they learn.