TEACHING ENGLISH FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

A. INTRODUCTION
In Indonesian context, English as a foreign language has been learned by learners since they were in Junior High School, even in some schools since Elementary School. They have been learned English because of the difference reasons / factors, such as: they are interested to learn English and want to be able to master it for the future ambitions, or might be forced by the rule of government in which make it as compulsory subject for students from Elementary School up to Senior High School.
Nowadays, the suspicious to learn English is not only come from the learners themselves, but also from their parents. Many parents are proud if their children can speak and master English earlier. Therefore, they manage to encourage their children to learn seriously in formal course. Even though, most of parents ask their children to learn English in Course institution with the expensive fee, since 5 or 6 years old (kindergarten). They do this, because of their awareness how important of English is for the future time.
Problem would be appeared then to the teacher, when the teaching and learning process take place. They face some problems based on How to teach them in order to gain satisfied result. The teacher should prepare and find out the appropriate techniques which is applied to the students. A good teacher should prepare his/herself by various and up to date techniques, mastering the material in order to understandable by students, and also children should perceive interested and happy in teaching and learning process in the classroom.
The teachers should aware that teaching English for young learners / children are different than adults. The children are not miniature of adults. The teacher also have to know who children are and how they learn?. To answer these questions, the teacher could be motivated and encouraged to prepare a good techniques, a suitable material in order to gain the target of language teaching to the children.
Unlike adults who can learn very comfortable from parts to whole, learn formally in the classroom by following and attending teachers' explanation in the classroom, children tend to learn things holistically, in the form of scripts (such as eating in the restaurant, going to school, going to bank etc). This tendency is reflected very well in children's play such as playing "school teachers and students", "a doctor and patients" and "sellers and buyers". For children, therefore, things are easy to learn when they are in their contextual totally. In Addition, children will find things meaningful, interesting, and functional when they can relate these things with their needs and personal experience (Bachrudin : 2003).
B. THEORIES OF TEACHING ENGLISH AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE (TEFL) FOR YOUNG LEARNERS
1. Becoming A Teacher of Young Children
Today's early childhood educator must be able to capture the intellectual though and creative spirit of education pioneers of the past. Although early childhood education is an accepted part of schooling today, the challenges facing teachers are no less than those faced by the early education pioneers. More than ever before, the early childhood educator must be tough-minded pioneer, able to dare, risk, try, innovate, and experiment.
Before deciding to become a teacher of young children, we should fully recognize the complexities of the position. Teaching young children is hard. "The younger the child the more it is to teach him and more pregnant that teaching is with future consequences' (Piaget : 1971 in Carol Scefeldt : 1980).
2. Getting To Know The Children
If want to become one of those teachers who really care, who can really make a difference, we'll have to get to know children. Getting to know the children requires some works. Children are complex individuals, in many ways they're like, yet it each is so very different. Learning to observe objectively and carefully, and learning to use observations, the teacher can note and record children physical development, social and emotional growth and intellectual progress in order to meet individual needs and strengthen or promote individual abilities. Observation may be shared with other professional and parents.
3. Learning Children With Special Needs
"Many teachers of handicapped children have observed that once they come to feel ease and capable of meeting the special needs related to a particular condition. They view children with disabilities differently: it become apparent that the handicapped child's basis needs are the same, except in degree, as those of all children" (Responding to individual needs 1976, p.1).
Working with children who are gifted, abused or handicapped does, however require careful planning. First, we should be able to asses each individual children using skills observation and result of standardized testing. Next we can work with specialists or other staff members to help plan the best classroom spaces, management and program to meet the needs of all children. Consultation with parents, physicians, social service agencies, and needed. Federal and state laws mandate mainstreaming the handicapped, the abused, and the gifted. Implementing those programs creatively and intelligently offer exiting and challenging opportunities for both teachers and children.
4. Planning And Evaluation
Teachers select and plan for children's learning. They base the selection of activities on their own values, the goals of the program, and on the needs of all of children. They prepare children to be effective members of a democratic society. In planning, whether for short-term daily plans or for long range plans, we should be able to identify how children will change as a result of their experience.
Evaluation is an essential part of planning, information for evaluating a program can be found in observation of individual children, standardized tests, conferences with parents, or informal rating scales. Some standards of evaluation are even built into lesson plan. Evaluation includes focus on children and the total program.
5. Learning Strategies For Young Learners
As stated previous, children are different than adults. In teaching and learning process, they are also must be taught differently. A suitable strategies may be more motivated children to participate in the classroom.
Telling
At times, even young children learn by being told. Sometimes it is necessary for an adult to tell a child, Such as "Stop, the light is red", or "Hang your coat here", "Don't be noise" etc. Teacher should and must at times give an explanation, state a rule, provide a name of object, or quickly and efficiently reassure the children verbally by commenting "Thunder makes a lot of noise, but it can not hurt us"
Reinforcing
Whenever a teacher smiles at a child, gives a quick hug, wink, praises, or on the other hand punishes and ignores some behavior or action of a child, he is using the principles of behavior modification. Whether or not teachers are aware of it, they are continually reinforcing, rewarding, ignoring, and punishing children's behavior.
When a child receives a reinforcement for some behavior, which might be anything from smile of word praise, to food, money, or a token which can be exchanged for some desired object; it increases the probability that the child will repeat the behavior. On the other hand, when undesirable behavior is ignored, when no reinforcement in the form of recognition, or even punishment, is given, the child will probably not continue or repeat the behavior. Reinforcement promotes learning and increases positive behaviors. It is positive teaching strategy, as opposed to punishment which is negative. The technique of reinforcement is so powerful and effective that it is the basis of animal training.
Giving feedback
Giving feedback, letting children to know how they are progressing, is in fact a type of reinforcement. The teacher in giving feedback, it is not only recognizing the child for some achievement, a demonstrated skill or behavior, but also at the same time is giving the child some explicit information about that behavior.
Feedback like all teaching strategies, must begin with an understanding of individual children. The teacher cues from each child in order to know what type of feedback will be useful. Feedback can also be used to suggest problem solutions to children what would be happen if?. Children can be encouraged to complete a task and stay with a project.
Modeling
Every action, non-action, and reaction every bit of verbal and nonverbal behavior of the teacher is noted by children, and many of these behaviors become incorporated into children's repertoires. Children learn from copying the behavior of their teachers. Almy (1975) writes:
Teacher may not be fully aware of the extent to which what they do becomes a pattern for the children to follow ...... it is also evident that in the facilitating function where the teacher's expletory and investigate attitude toward materials can be copied by the children. Furthermore one only has to observe the way children in some classrooms take care of each other and provide comfort in the time of distress to realize that the care taking and guidance functions of the teacher can also be copied by the children. (Almy : 1975)
Knowing that children do model their behaviors on others. Teachers have a responsibility to exhibit behavior that worthy of being emulated. Teachers should attempt to analyze their attitudes, values, and behaviors in order to present children with those that are prosocial and will transmit the values inherent in a democratic society.
Working with group
Some teaching strategies are useful when working with children in group. Children, like all humans, are social beings and take great pleasure in being with others. Young children, however, have difficulty learning to work in a group. Their attention spans are short, they can not sit still for long, and their egocentric thought gets in the way of understanding one another. Even though it is difficult for young children to work together, to become a part of a group, it is something everyone wants to, and must learn.
Group activities help children develop the skills of interaction that will permit them to enter into the social world. In addition, participation in a group strengthens cognitive ability. When children are together with another, they are forced to see alternative points of view and to readjust their thinking to that of group. When children share in group discussion, they begin to recognize that others have ideas, and they may see the same event in different ways.
Nurturing
The ability to give children the nurturance they need is strategy of the successful teachers. Nurturance, feeling the warmth and approval of another , is prerequisite to intellectual growth. Only as children feel secure, loved, and nurtured, do they have the confidence, support, and security they need to risk learning new things and to reach out to others.
Children can be nurtured in many ways. Teachers must be sensitive to the needs of each child and know which children are made comfortable by just a smile or nonphysical expression of nurturance and which children need hugs, holding, and pat on the back. Knowledge of the backgrounds of the children often helps teacher to understand each child's needs.
Observing
As the children work and play, the teacher maintains the active role of observer. The entire group of children, small groups working together and each individual child receive the teacher's observations.
Observing and keeping an eye on everything and everyone at the same time, the teacher maintains control over the group, even when the children are actively involved in individual , self-initiated activities. All teachers who have worked with young children can relate a time when, somehow, intuitively, they knew something was wrong or disaster was approaching.
Observing is a strategy that is ongoing. Teacher observe throughout the day as children relate to each other, their parents and the material.
C. SOME THEORIES IN TEACHING NUMBERS FOR YOUNG LEARNERS (pronunciation, counting skills and telephone numbers).
In teaching English as foreign language, the teacher should be clever to identify and determine what is appropriate techniques in teaching a particular topics. It influences the attendance of students in the classroom. A suitable techniques might be encourage students to learn active and happily. Hence, the material that is transferred by teachers might not rubbish and knowledgeable by students.
Teaching numbers for children is an interested material if the technique which applied appropriate with students' need. There are some techniques might be useful and appropriate to the children in teaching about numbers (pronunciation, counting skills and telephone number).
1. Total Physical Response ( TPR )
TPR have been used by teachers, particularly primary school teachers for many thousand of years as evidenced in the following expressions: "stand up", "sit down", Clap your hand", "keep silent" etc. In this method, teaching number for students can be done as follows: "Teacher asks students to show their finger adjusted with teachers' instruction. For example when teacher says : Five. Student should show their fingers while hand up based on teachers instruction. If students' response are correct, the TPR are acceptable and understandable by students.
2. Telling stories
Stories for children exist in every country and every culture. Stories can entertain children, educate them and also give children about their culture ability. Telling story is an interesting method for children. Most children are like story. Using this method enable them to train their listening skills, sharpen their brain in taking content of the story. To do this, teacher should choose selectively what is suitable story for children. In addition, The relevance story with the topic should become priority in selecting story. Besides, technique to tell the story enable students to participate and listen actively.
Bachrudin M. : 2003 writes some advantages of stories for children, such as:
1. Stories are motivating and fun. They create a desire in children to continue learning.
2. Stories exercise the imagination helping children develop their own creative powers
3. Stories help children to link fantasy with the real world
3. Games
Games are interested activity for children. Most of them like games very much. To accommodate their need, teacher could apply this kind of technique to transfer the material to the children. This is applied to answer a question "Who children are and How they learn?".
In choosing games, teachers also must be selective. It must be adjusted with the topic that is being discussed, and how interested the games for children at the time. By applying this, students are expected to be active in the classroom, and reduce of students boring in the teaching and learning process.
4. Using Song, Rhymes,Finger Plays
Song, rhymes and finger plays are kind of models in teaching children. Basically, children like sing and also listen a song. These could be applied to children in order to be able to gain of learning target. Many songs and rhymes for young children are designed to incorporate action, and the finger play is a rhyme built entirely around the use of hand and the finger to enter into the performance of a rhyme. Playing finger can be applied in teaching numbers. Teacher can show to the children number of finger, and let them mention in English the number finger that teachers' show.
5. Using Media
Media is very useful in encouraging children's motivation in learning. A appropriate media for a certain subject/topic may influence the comprehension level of children in particular topic. There are some medias could be used in teaching and learning for children:
Cards
Pictures
Real object
Video and Audio visual
Etc.
6. Role play
Children like to act out. They are interested to imitate what the ever seen on TV or movie. Role play will make children happy interested to participate in the classroom, because they can do that while playing, laughing, even move one to another places. To apply this, teacher could divide children into some groups, then determine each children as an actor or an actress. Teacher should prepare a short and funny story that relate to the topic. Then children are asked to act out with their friend based on scenario.
D. CONCLUSION
Whether you enjoy working with children or not, it is likely that you'll find yourself teaching this age group at some point in your TEFL career.
They can be difficult and challenging but they can also be the most enthusiastic and rewarding students you'll ever have the pleasure of teaching.
Here are some main pointers:
Keep lessons fun, lively and simple. It is a good idea to use a project based approach so one theme is revisited over a series of lessons. By teaching this way, the vocabulary is reinforced and repeated but still remains interesting.
If you're teaching very young children, variety is of utmost importance. Lots of short, simple activities are best suited to their attention span. Learning aims should be kept basic and you should try to incorporate plenty of child-friendly practice tasks that allow them to practise the target language repeatedly.
When getting your students to practise their English, try to incorporate things that young children enjoy doing generally. Things such as singing, playing games and colouring in etc. Just remember to be creative and more importantly, allow the children to be creative. Using songs and chanting is particularly good for teaching things like numbers and the alphabet. In fact, one of the best things about teaching younger children (under 10) is that they are generally less reserved about using another language so they will tend to speak quite early on.
You must always remember to keep the lessons appealing. You could even adapt existing exercises to make them more child-friendly. The possibilities are endless - just be creative. Make a note of methods that are particularly successful so that you can use them again for different topics.
Though it might seem like a good idea to use English children's magazines or comics for your class, it's really not. Most of this material, with perhaps the exception of really basic comics, will be unsuitable for your foreign students. Furthermore, always remember that there will be various culture issues to consider and you certainly don't want to get yourself or your students in trouble. It is much better to use course books and resources specifically designed for young foreign learners of English. These kinds of book are fun and engaging and your students will be able to take much more from them. Having said this, you do not need to follow these books rigidly - in fact it's probably better that you don't. That way you'll be able to make sure you are teaching the relevant material but in a way that allows you to keep the lessons interesting and appropriate for your class.
Also remember that, although young children may not be reading and writing much, it is a good idea to provide them with the written form of any vocabulary introduced. Only do this when appropriate though as the main aim is too keep the lessons fun. A good way of doing this is the use of pre-written vocabulary cards, perhaps even with simple pictures on. This will allow you to have a reference for later use and will help engage the children, gradually familiarising them with the written form of the word.
Finally, be sure to use plenty of revision tasks on a regular basis. These can be implemented in various ways such as games or quizzes - again with the emphasis on learning through fun.