LET´S PLAY THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
GAME
Workshop for Teachers of English
Level: Elementary school
A1
Ezequiel Alvarez Cuesta
Teacher of English Language and
Culture
Universidad del Atlántico
Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación
Idiomas Extranjeros
LET´S PLAY THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE GAME
Goals:
q
To acquire principles to teach
English to Children
q
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
Interest
Sense
of
humor
Curiosity
Sensory Input: Stimulate all
five senses
H. Douglas Brown recommends:
Physical activities: Role play, play games and
Total Physical Response activities.
Project work
Sensory aids, such as: smelling, touching...
Audiovisual aids: videos, pictures, tapes, songs,
Mimic: Children can learn by gestures.
Affective factors
Douglas 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.
Influence of 1st
Language acquisition
process
To learn a language
We listen first
Influence of
Right brain
T.P.R.
By listening
Children give
A physical response
Affectivity:
How you feel is
Very important
Use of
commands
Teacher´s voice
And gestures
Are key resources.
Web sites
The elephant song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yihq8
BIhL9c
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
Oral language
Non-verbal
language
Knowledge about
The context
Knowledge
About the speaker
Schemata
Listening Strategies
Pre-listening
activities:
Pre-teach
vocabulary
Discuss 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 the
format
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
Vocabulary
Grammar
Social
language
Fluency
SPEAKING
Body
language
Register
Listening
Pronuntiation
Speaking Strategies
Using 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
Intentionality
Schema
Language
Writing Activities
Copying
Matching
Organising and
copying
Dictation
Fill in exercises
Letters
cards
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
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:
Constructive and creative
comprehension
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...
Constructive and creative
comprehension
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.
Communicative approach
Learners must get
involved in the use of
authentic and
meaningful language.
Fluency and accuracy
are complementary.
However, fluency is
preferred, specially with
children.
Communicative approach
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.
Communicative approach
•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 which
Meaning 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 interest
They gather information
about the topic
In project work, children
can integrate the 4
communicative skills.
They learn to work
collaboratively
At 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.