The Main Principles of Teaching Young Children
In China, Parents realize learning English is essential to their child's future. There are many reasons why Chinese have to speak okay English; they also know that the best time for one to master another language, the earlier the best. The biggest challenge we face in China is that parents are reluctant to use English in daily life. It is easy to understand why most Chinese are unwilling to speak English if you know our culture, "Saving Face," they are afraid to make mistakes in front of others, take "English" as a complicated subject, only teacher and school can handle it.
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Benefits of Teaching Young Children
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This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Mengru W. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
Benefits of Teaching Young Children
When I start to teach English to small kids, the good news is children are incredibly adapted to learning languages and pick up new words, phrases, and grammar structures easily. The bad news is that kids have a lot of energy and a shorter attention span than adults, so I struggled to get them to sit and study, so classroom management is essential. However, I use the kids' energy to my advantage and engage them with games, songs, and activities to help them learn while having fun.
Useful Teaching Techniques
In the class, I apply music and songs to help teach small kids English in circle time. According to Super Simple Songs: "Young learners pick up vocabulary, grammatical structures and the rhythm of the language simply by doing what they already love to do...sing." Use songs to teach numbers, the alphabet, body parts, and other words requiring memorization.
Motions and gestures during the lesson to reinforce learning. The action further enhances the child's ability to remember by adding a physical association to the word. It helps small kids use up energy, so they do not get fidgety or distracted.
Build an interactive environment for the children. "Transitions Abroad" advises teachers to: "Have them standing up and sitting down, weave games and dramatic play and singing into your lessons. Have the children take turns helping you prepare or carry out the activity or project." This helps the kids stay focused and offers additional opportunities for language learning as they follow directions, learn the rules for games, and communicate about their activities.
Ask the children to take charge by having them lead activities such as Pictionary, charades, hangman, and matching games to teach grammar, vocabulary, and verb tenses. Allowing children to demonstrate their learning will build confidence and give them real-life language skills. Team games build conversational skills as students communicate with each other in the course of the game.
Language Acquisition
Language has its tempo; speaking a language fluently involves regular pauses, stops, and starts inappropriate places. For example, most kids do not say in a constant. They have trouble speaking continuous sentences, running diatribe of words; instead, they insert pauses between phrases, use accents, and increase or decrease the overall speed of speech. Music has a tempo, and teaching young children songs with rhythms and beats or learning to march in time to a tune can help students understand speaking and improve their communication skills.
Are you ready to teach English abroad or online?
When teaching young kids, we have more responsibility. I expect our education system to improve. English in public schools can learn some useful learning methods instead of requiring students to sit on the chair properly to recite the textbooks.
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