Teaching Young Learners

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English language has been rated as one of the most important international languages nowadays. It has been found at primary levels around the world. Teaching English as a foreign language is not an easy task and need a lot of hard work, especially for young learners. However, starting earlier is not the solution for producing better English speakers. EFL teachers of young learners have to follow some strategies and techniques to understand and teach young learners better. YL Students who aged 5-12 can not spend two or three hours sitting on chairs and listening to teachers lectures as adults do. They lose interest more quickly and less able to keep motivated on tasks for long time because these students have short attention spans and are easily distracted. YL Students will be usually learning very basic material but a skillful teacher has to design creative lessons that get students attention and participation during the class, such as moving around and speaking with one another. Interacting with each other improves their communication skills and even building confidence in using the language. In addition, young learners are generally very enthusiastic at this level about songs and games. In order to encourage everyone to participate, it is important to include your sessions with different types of songs and active games to make the lessons relaxed and fun. The teacher should be able to create different activities to encourage and activate students that everyone can enjoy learning in.
Moreover, another important skill that a teacher of young learners should be acquired is building self esteem. Student at this level wants to please teacher rather than their group peers as they act and feel toward her like her mum. The teac...

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...before she introduced the new terms and vocabulary. Finally, Bruner investigated how adults use language to mediate the world for children and help them solve problems. Children learn effectively through scaffolding by adults. This technique is based on taking step by step for building knowledge. It suggests that a teacher can scaffold children learning in different ways. For example, students face difficulties in reading lessons in the first stages; therefore, the teacher has to use visual and auditory materials before she enrolls in the lesson, such as realia, pictures, and videos. This will helps the child to predict what the story is about. In addition, she has to introduce the new terms which are difficult for a child to pronounce it. These techniques and instructional strategies are most effective for teaching English as a foreign language for young learners.

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