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Which Teaching Strategy is Most Appropriate for Very Young Language Learners?

By Dominick SpyliosSPA 414

Topic

“It is said that children learn a foreign language better than adults and this is often used to support the early introduction of foreign language teaching” (Sühendan, 829).

This study analyzes not only how Very Young language learners learn language differently from other learners, but what method is found to be teaching them in the most effective manner. Very young language learner: 3-6 years old (no elementary

school) Young language learner: 7-9 years old Older young language learner: 10-12 years old

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What do you think?https://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/

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Background ResearchIt has been found that: “very young learners have low concentration span but they are easily excited. Although they have high source of motivation, they learn slowly and forget easily as they have a short memory. They need lots of repetition and revision. They are kinesthetic and energetic whereas their motor skills, such as using a pen and scissors, are limited. They tend to learn holistically. They enjoy love stories, fantasy, imagination, art, drawing and coloring” (Sühendan, 829).

We as teachers, can grasp the minds of our very young students by teaching thematic units such as: family, animals, shopping, celebrities, and well known story books in order to focus more on content and communication by recycling language use rather than focusing strictly on grammar.

Background Information continued

ALM: Focuses on dialogue memorization, drills, repetition, minimal pairs and grammar games. Dialogues are the key focus to this approach – and they are used to introduce new topics. These dialogues are supported both by grammatical repetition and through mimes and gestures.

TPR: This approach allows learners to acquire language as they did as babies learning their native language. Speech and action are developed simultaneously. Goal is to listen and perform what the teacher says based upon his model.

CLT: relates to real life activities and idealizes on how language needs to have a function in a social environment rather than a set of grammar rules. Interaction is encouraged to promote learning through games, role-plays, and songs.

Story Telling: Offer children: rich vocabulary, surprise, grammatical repetition, rhymes metaphors, and dialogues all in the target language. Students become actively engaged by combining their thoughts of the story by acquiring the target language in a natural contextualized way.

Suggestopedia: Music and musical rhythm assist students in gaining quick conversational proficiency. Everyday language is focused upon in this approach – supplemented by authentic and vibrant objects/images about the Target language.

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Research QuestionsThe following questions were asked to the teachers during this research:

1. Which activities, methods or techniques do foreign language teachers most frequently use when they teach to very young learners?

2. Which activities, methods or techniques do foreign language teachers find effective while teaching to young learners?

3. Which activities, methods or techniques do foreign language teachers find easy to prepare?

4. Do foreign language teachers most frequently use the most effective or the most easily prepared activities, methods or techniques in their classes?

Variables

34 Foreign Language teachers teaching kindergarten at private schools in Ankara, Turkey.

Teachers “were obtained by using purposive convenience sampling” (Sühendan, 831).

Instruments

The researcher supplied a four section questionnaire for each teacher asking the following: First section: teacher demographics (gender, length of

service, college attended, their status of pedagogical training, and whether or not they attend service training about teaching FLES.

Second section: What activities, methods, or techniques they frequently use in class.

Third section: What activities, methods, or techniques they found most effective.

Fourth section: Which activities, methods, or techniques are the easiest to prepare?

Instruments continued…

This questionnaire was prepared by experts working at an unspecified university who teach foreign languages to young learners. Questionnaire was revised thoroughly before

administering it to the teachers.

8 of the 34 teachers who were given the questionnaire were also interviewed. Interview was based upon the usage frequency,

effectiveness, and easiness of preparation of the activities, methods, or techniques utilized by the teachers

Data Collection Techniques

When surveyed, “the teachers were asked to fill in the general information form and the questionnaire, then a semi structured interview was organized with 8 volunteer teachers. They put forward their opinions about teaching techniques for very young learners” (Sühendan, 831).

Each interview was recorded personally by the researcher

• Before the study took place, preschool administrators were visited and informed of the purpose and procedures of the study that would be taking place.

• Permission was granted for the teachers teaching English, and data was collected upon 34 of them over the course of 6 weeks.

Data Analysis Techniques

SSPS 17.00 is a statistical recording program created by IBM for researchers, and is designed to collate various forms of statistical data.

“The collected data was analyzed by using frequency distribution method via SSPS 17.00 and descriptive statistics were conducted. The recorded interviews were decoded by the researcher” (Sühendan, 831).

SFindings

• All 34 teachers were women with 1-5 years experience

• 18 graduates of education

• 16 graduates of literature

• 24 received pedagogical training

• 26 attended several in-service training seminars and/or conferences on teaching FLES

• 100% of teachers used videos and visuals in teaching

• 88% said they most frequently used songs and rhymes

• 85% frequently use mimes and gestures

• Only 17% frequently used finger games followed by role-play techniques

Most Effective

Least Effective

Videos & Visuals

Finger Games

Says Who?Throughout the findings of this study, as seen: all teachers surveyed highly prefer using visuals and videos in the classroom to enhance the learning and hook the interests of their very young language learner students. They also give advantages to students who learn in various different manners such as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

At the same time, teachers also found miming, gestures, songs and rhymes to be effective methods of teaching very young learners, however these results were not unanimous as they were in relation to video and visual implementation in the classroom.

“I’ll never give up using pictures and videos in my classroom. Pictures elaborate the class, they are fixed on walls. We can reach them easily and practice on them easily.” ~ Teacher

“Videos always attract the attention of little children. They are colorful, full of action. They are for audial, visual, and also kinesthetic children.” ~ Teacher“The rhythm, the speech on videos sounds interesting to children. They learn words with correct pronunciation.” ~Teacher

Results

Researchers found that teacher use the practices of TPR most in class and also that they (the teachers) find it to be the most effective approach to teaching foreign language to very young language learners. These lessons have also been found to be the easiest to plan because they avoid heavy focus on grammar and focus more on verbal communication skills.

• Pantomimes help symbolize the unknown when expressing topics to students in the TL leading them to make inferences through upper level thinking.

• Songs allow students to practice pronunciation and memorization of vocabulary and sentence structure through repetition in the TL.

TPR; being focused around speech and action is successful with very young language learners because students at this age (3-6 years) are much more capable of oral communication rather than reading and writing.

These activities also result in a lot of movement during lessons – catering to the needs of kinesthetic learners, which many Very young language learners happen to be.

TPR

Songs &

Rhymes

Videos &

Visuals Mimes &

Gestures

Results Continued…

Finger games are used less often in class since they are found to be less effective. 50% found this approach to be easy to prepare, yet they did not wholly find it effective.

Drama and story telling techniques, along with arts and crafts activities were found to be highly difficult to prepare and they were simply found to not be as effective as mimes and gestures which are much easier to facilitate in class.

Crafts are very beneficial to learning, however they are very time consuming.

Drama, story telling, and role playing activities are all seen to be effective approaches to teaching foreign language, however they seem to work better with older learners. Learners of this age don’t tend to work as well in groups as do older children due to their shorter attention spans and shy personalities.

Organization of these activities was found to be stressful on the teacher, but also the instruction of these activities was seen as stressful for young learners in a foreign language.

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Limitations

All teachers included in this study were females with teaching experience ranging from 1 to 5 years.

If there were a larger pool of teachers to include in this study, either with more years of experience or being

males as well, we could have possibly seen very different results than those presented.

Perhaps older teachers would have preferred teaching in different methods such as ALM or CLT rather than TPR

due to what they learned over the years in front of various different classes.

Watch TPR Come Alive!

http://youtu.be/PgbmU7c-TRI

Conclusions

Since TPR is proven to be the most effective method in teaching Very Young Foreign Language Learners, language teachers should do the following: Have props such as stationary, toys, and puppets

readily available Place multimedia platforms in the classroom for easy

accessibility Attend more seminars and conferences about teaching

Foreign Language to Very Young Learners Have a large collection of story books known by the

children in their L1, making their L2 experience easier. Decorate the walls with vibrant and colorful visuals to

teach the TL. And leave lecture space in classroom

Works Cited

Fin

Sühendan, E. (2014). Which is the Most Appropriate Strategy for Very Young

Language Learners?. International Journal Of Social Sciences & Education, 4(4), 829-837.