Teaching Young Learners English in Chivilcoy: Benefits and Challenges

Chivilcoy is a city where most schools apply FLES programs. A FLES (foreign language in the elementary school) program is one in which children study English as just one more school subject, usually twice a week. Through this kind of program, children are able to develop different skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.

One of the benefits of this type of program is that children become aware of other languages and cultures: they develop an appreciation for them. Furthermore, through extended exposure to the English language, young learners simply have more time to learn it, and that leads to greater fluency and better pronunciation. Another benefit that worth mentioning is the ability that young learners acquire to see a problem from different points of view: they develop such a mental flexibility that they can be aware not only of different cultures and languages, but also of different perspectives of a situation.

Having mentioned all these benefits about FLES programs for young learners, we should also think of the challenges they face. For example, this kind of program needs teachers properly trained with adequate proficiency in English. But it is not enough to know English. A well -trained teacher is one who has three different types of knowledge: English knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and technological knowledge.

It is important to understand that, since English is an international and intercultural language, the purpose of teaching it to young learners is to make them able to use it as a means of communication among speakers of English as an international language, and not to speak a specific variety of English. This has to do with another challenge faced when teaching English to young learners: the FLES programs teachers have to choose properly the material they work with so as to make children develop awareness of different cultures and varieties of English.

In my opinion, the most difficult challenge for teachers is to keep students motivated through all the years they study a language. I think that one way to motivate them is to make them see how the content relates to them and the world around them.