In the first meeting of TEYL class, i
got the new thing about the TEYL subject. That is understanding characteristic
of young learners. For the successful teaching of English in primary schools,
it is really important for the teacher to understand the young learners’
characteristic, because it will play a crucial role in how the teacher build
the lesson and how the teacher can reach the goal that is make all students
involved in the learning proccess. Uderstanding characteristic of young
learners divide into four part.
Firstly, the teachers
should look at the physical side of the young learners. The physical world of
the young learners are dominant and the young learners are actively
engaged in making sense of their world. Young learners appear to be predisposed
to acquire information. These biases toward certain types of learning should
pave the way for competence in early schooling. They lack knowledge and
experience, but not reasoning ability. Indeed, although young learners are
inexperienced, they reason with the knowledge they have. Precocious knowledge
may jump-start the learning process, but because of limited experience and
underdeveloped systems of logical thinking, children’s knowledge contains
misconceptions. So the teacher should have a visual agenda (board maker symbols)
displayed low enough for children to touch and use it everyday. It will be
affected the students to be familiar about what the teacher give.
Secondly, the
social side of the young learner. The young learners are happy playing and
working in company of others. They can’t work alone. They prefer having chat
and playing with their group than they only sit in their own chair and
listening the speech from the teacher. It will be great, the teacher can manage
the class effectively. They can teach each key concepts associated with
classroom activities, e.g. share, partner, line up, sit in circle, clean up,
come here or use photos to illustrate the ideas.
Thirdly, the
psychological side. The young learners have short concentration span. It means
that they can’t give attention fully to the what the teacher said. And also
they get bored easy. So the teachers
should vary their techniques to break the boredom. They should give varied activities
such as handwriting, songs, games, etc.
The last, the
characteristic of young learners is their first language is not fully develop
and they need to develop their native language. According to Phillips (1995:7)
in learning a language, young learners respond to the language, depending on
what it does or what they can do with it rather than treating it as an intellectual game or abstract system. It means that the young learners will adopt
easily to what the teacher do in class. So the teacher should give the best way
how to deliver their lesson to them. There are a lot of ways, more of them are
the teacher can use the statement “First”, “Then”, supported by boldmarker
symbols to help children understand what is going to happen next, the teacher can create bold maker sequences
for routines. E.g. entry, snack time, etc, or the teacher use repetitive songs,
chants, and rhymes to teach essential vocabulary and sentence forms.
REFERENCES
- Chewy, The Characteristic of young learner, tersedia : http://educationchewy.blogspot.com/2011/03/characteristic-of-young-learner.html, diunduh : 2 April 2014
- Farwaniya, Characteristic of young learner, tersedia : http://farwaniya03.tripod.com/id6.html, diunduh : 2 April 2014
- Suggested Strategies for Teaching Young English Language Learners, unpublished material
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