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LET´S PLAY THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE GAME

Workshop for Teachers of English Level: Elementary schoolA1

Ezequiel Alvarez Cuesta

Teacher of English Language and CultureUniversidad del AtlánticoFacultad de Ciencias de la EducaciónIdiomas Extranjeros

LET´S PLAY THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

GAMEGoals: To acquire principles to

teach English to Children To practice strategies to

teach English in a funny way.

Target: Elementary school Teachers of English

Teaching Children

Intellectual Development: According to Piaget, children from 6 to 11 are in the “concrete operation” stage. Therefore, they can not understand “grammar rules”.

How do children learn a foreign language?

Children learn a language as a whole, as part of a whole learning experience.It is the responsibility of teachers to provide this whole language learning experience.

Many children go through a silent period during which they a re processing their language environment.Children should be allowed to learn at their wn pace...

How do children learn a language? Vale and Feunteun

It is very important for children to have the opportunity to use their hands and their bodies to express and experience language. In an dveryday context in an English – speaking country, children are normally exposed to a variety of physical and intellectual experiences of language.In the foreing learning situation where chidlren may have as little as one hour per week of English, it is vital to include physical activities where the main focus is on the physical response or phyisical activity, and not the spoken word.

Intellectual Development

H. Douglas Brown recommends:Don´t explain grammar using terms like:”present progressive” or “adverb clause”.To explain grammar, show learners patterns and examples: He is brushing his teeth. She is putting on her coat.Certain difficult concepts or patterns need more repetition. Repetition help the ear and the brain to acquire the patterns.

Attention Span

H. Douglas Brown thinks children do not have short attention spans. But they get bored easily.What can we do as teachers?We can make lessons interesting, live and fun.

Here and now

Curiosity

Sense

of

humorInterest

Sensory Input: Stimulate all five senses

H. Douglas Brown recommends:Physical activities: Role play, play games and Total Physical Response activities.Project workSensory aids, such as: smelling, touching...Audiovisual aids: videos, pictures, tapes, songs, Mimic: Children can learn by gestures.

Affective factorsDouglas Brown considers children are often

innovative in language forms but still have lots of inhibitions. Therefore, he recommends:Help your students to laugh with each other at various mistkes they make.Be patient and supportive to build self – esteem. Yet at the same time be firm in your expectations of students.Elicit as much oral participation as possible form students, especially the quieter ones, to give them plenty of oportunities for practicing.

Affectivity

In any learning situation, where individuals need to interact with others, there are many social and affective constraints and pressures that can interfere with effective learning:A highly succesful business person may be embarrassed at his/her poor performance in English...A teenager may be reluctant to speak in a foreign language in front of his/her classmates.

A shy eight year old may be unable to say a word for fear of making a mistake in front of a strict teacher and laughing classmates.

T.P.R.

T.P.R.

Teacher´s voiceAnd gestures

Are key resources.

Use of commands

By listeningChildren give

A physical response

To learn a languageWe listen first

Affectivity:How you feel is Very important

Influence ofRight brainInfluence of 1st

Language acquisitionprocess

Web sites

The elephant songhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=yihq8BIhL9c

Listening Skill

Listening is a complex ability. It involves more than just hearing language. Listening is the ability to receive, attend to, interpret and respond emotionally to verbal messages.

Jack C Richards.

Listening Skill

When we listen, we use more than language, we also use non-verbal clues like body language, to background knowledge about the situations, the speakers, their goals, the topic or activity... And when we listen, we process language quickly “in real time”. This is why listening can be challenging for learners.

Jack C. Richards

Non-verballanguage

Oral language

Schemata

Knowledge About the speaker

Knowledge aboutThe context

Listening Strategies

Pre-listening activities:Pre-teach vocabularyDiscuss pictures, photos or cartoons.Discuss what students know about the topic.

While listening activities:Complete a gap fill.Answer multiple choice questions.Answer true/false questions.Take notes.

Listening Strategies

Post- listenig activities:Discuss interpretations and opinions.Link listening with another skill.Review pre-listening vocabulary adn teach new vocabulary.

Play with the language

Let the pupils talk to themselves. Make up rhymes, sing songs, tell stories. Play with the language –let them talk nonsense, experiment with words sounds: “Let´s go – pets go”... Playing with the language in this way is very common in first language development and is a very natural stage in the first stages of foreign language learning too.

Wendy Scott and Lisbeth Ytreberg.

Reading Skill

knowledge of the world

Knowledge of the topic-schema-

Knowledge Of theformat

Reading Strategies

Depending on the text we are reading, we generally use one of these strategies: identify the topic predict and guess read for general understanding read for specific information read for details interpret or make inferences

SPEAKING

GrammarVocabulary

Sociallanguage

Register

PronuntiationListening

Bodylanguage

Fluency

Speaking StrategiesUsing a mascot: This is a succesful way to present language to children:

Teddy, can you swim?No, I can´t, but I can sing.Teddy, do you like carrots?Ugh, no!What about bananas?Yes, I love them.

Speaking strategies

Role plays: Beginners of all

ages can start on role play dialogues by learning a simple one by heart and then acting it out on pairs.

Writing Skill

Culture

Language

Schema

Intentionality

Writing Activities

CopyingMatchingOrganising and copyingDictationFill in exercisesLetterscards

Integrating the 4 skills

H. Douglas Borown recommends to follow a whole language approach. This way, as teachers, we can integrate the four skills, during the lesson. A lesson plan, according to this model, should include:

•Pre-reading discussion of the topic to activate schemata.

•Listening to a text about the topic

•Practice reading strategies: skimming, scanning, inferring...

•Writing about the text.

Constructive and creative comprehension


According to Vale and Feunteun, when children read or listen to a story, there are four main types of mental processes involved:


Picturing and imaging. Children create a mental picture of what they are reading or listening to.Predicting and recalling. Children imagine or predict what is going to happen next...


Identification and pesonalising. Children identify with the characters and situations in the story according to their own personal experiences.Making value judgements. Children apply their own values to those encontered in the story.

Pictures and Visual Aids

We live in a world dominated by visual messages. Young children learn much a bout the written word long before they have formal reading and writing activities at school. Information in the form of words and pictures clues are displayed in most public places, in the home, and on television, and children soon realise that there is a close association between visual information and the spoken word.

David Vale and Ann Feunteun.

Communicative Competence

Communicative approach

Classrooms goals are focused on all of the components of communicative competence: Grammatical, functional, sociolinguistic, and strategic.


Learners must get involved in the use of authentic and meaningful language.Fluency and accuracy are complementary. However, fluency is preferred, specially with children.


The goal of the communicative classroom is that children use the language inside and outside the classroom.Students are given opportunities to understand their own learning styles and to develop strategies for autonomous learning.


•The role of the teacher is that of facilitatior and guide.

•Students are encouraged to construct meaning through interaction with others.

Communicative Skills

Task Based Approach

Peter Skehan (Brown, 2000) defines task as an activity in whichMeaning is primary.There is some communication problem to solve.The task is comparable to real –world activities.The assessment of the task is in terms of outcome.

Task Based Approach : Target Tasks and Pedagogical Tasks

Target tasks: The learners must accomplish this activities beyond (outside) the classroom.

Pedagogical tasks: They are the nucleous of the classroom activities. They include a series of techniques that help learners to perform the target task.

Project Work

In project work, children can learn by doing and researching.STEPS:Children choose a topic of interestThey gather information about the topic

In project work, children can integrate the 4 communicative skills.They learn to work collaborativelyAt the end they show a product.

Project Work

Bibliography

Brown, Douglas H. Teaching by Principles. New York: Longman, 2000. Reilly, Vanessa & Ward Sheyla M. Very young learners. New York: Oxford, 2002.Scott, Wendy A. And Ytreberg, Lisbeth H. Teaching English to Children. New York: Longman, 2000.Vale, David with Feuteun, Anne. Teaching children English. Melbourne: Cambridge, 1996.