Keys for Teaching Children English

萬(wàn)艷　楊亞濤

Abstract: We use many ways in our bilingual kindergarten program and it has been achieved a lot in our children English teaching. I would like to present some of them in this article and let other people benefit from them.

Key words: keys ; teaching ; children English

In our bilingual kindergarten program, we identify twenty competencies that a teacher needs to demonstrate to effectively teach a second language to young children. Successful teachers demonstrate these competencies continuously and spontaneously in their interaction with the children during each play episode. Here I will present some keys for children English teaching.

1 Facilitating understanding

For children who have little or no experience with English, no words or structures have any meaning until their sounds become consistent with a particular context or experience that can distinguish it from the whole milieu of meaningless sounds. Teachers must remember that they understand what they are saying to the children, their words are only sounds until they have meaning for the children.

When most children enter a bilingual kindergarten program, they are not only afraid of all the new children and new surroundings of the class, but even more afraid of the new sound system being produced by all the people around. From the beginning, most children are hesitant to make an attempt to enter this sound system. They may not understand what is going on, they may be afraid to make mistakes, they may be afraid to speak to someone unfamiliar to them, or they may just not be interested in making any effort. All of these reactions are natural. A fun activity will usually be enough to get all the children involved, and also serves as a first step to loosen up nervous children, but for many children a fun activity alone is not enough to get them speaking. Teachers must make additional efforts to encourage the children to speak and to create an atmosphere in which the child will feel free and even want to express himself and by talking to the people around him. Teachers can make speaking easy by being accepting and non-directing when the children make an attempt to speak; by soliciting an appropriate response so the children clearly understand how they are expected to respond, and can respond that way; by setting up and offering appropriate enticements that give the children an incentive to speak without creating fear; by using a language of endearment that closely bonds the teacher to the children; and by adapting spontaneously to the needs of the children so they know they are not interrupting the teachers activity by speaking.

2 Using a language of endearment

A child should sense warmth and love coming from the adults who interact with him. The language of care and concern, of understanding and empathy, of acceptance and worth needs to be known and spoken frequently. Much of bonding is a function of using expressions of endearment. Children who hear warmth and togetherness being expressed linguistically have a keen desire to learn English in order to reciprocate their own feelings of attachment to the caregiver.

One of the significant benefits we experienced as a result of speaking a second language was the increased opportunity for us to express our love to each other when we became involved in the activities with our bilingual children. There was no significant difference in the amount of time we spent playing with our children and the time we spent in play episodes with our bilingual children. But there was a more direct expression of love and a stronger sense of bonding which spontaneously emerged between us and our younger children.

Therefore, it is best to provide an emotional climate which is inviting, warm, tender and cohesive during each play episode making a good environment for using terms of endearment. The quality and nature of the linguistic communication sets the climate for future verbal interaction.

3 Enhancing teaching effectiveness

In addition to the teaching skills and competencies we have already discussed, teachers can enhance their teaching by using a few effective techniques that experience has taught. These techniques help a teacher to utilize resources she may not think she has. We discuss the techniques of keeping children on task to provide a richer language model: letting advanced peers lead those who may not be familiar with new structures or routines; directing children to speak to each other instead of only to the teacher to encourage real and constant communication, teaching while cleaning up to fill every moment of time with a rich linguistic context and handling problems in a way that turns mishaps into enhanced learning situations.

4 Keeping children on task

The fit between language and activity is very close: language helps develop the activity and the activity helps develop the language. For children who are functionally fluent in the language, discussion that accompanies activity stimulates involvement; it is relatively easy to keep children on task when the teacher talks about the objects, explains the steps, encourages participation, discusses outcome, praises progress, talks during demonstrations about details, describes the use of materials and tools, and tells anecdotal stories that draw the children into the activity. However, children who understand very little English may tune out the verbal stimulation and consequently lose interest in an activity in a short period of time. Therefore the teacher must develop the skill necessary to keep the children on task.

Playing with clay makes a good example not only for what to do but what not to do. A teacher who gives each child a chunk of clay and encourages the children to express themselves creatively, waiting to see what will emerge, should not be surprised to see a fine nest of eggs and some long snakes. As soon as the snakes and eggs are finished, the child jumps up and looks for something else to do. Time-on-task is usually about five minutes. On the other hand, a skilled teacher can keep four-year-olds on task, independent of language, for twenty to thirty minutes by modeling for the children, step by step, the creation of something developmentally challenging. Language is used by the teacher as a model of the linguistic usage the children need to learn to talk about the referents.

5 Directing children to speak in English to each other

When children are left alone, they will tend to talk to each other in their primary language. One of the most significant lessons the children taught us in the early stages of our observation on how children learn a second language came in a preschool lab in one of the most successful bilingual kindergartens. At that time we believed that if we took control of all the toys through a check-out system and then required the children to tell us what they wanted in Chinese as a condition of our giving them the toy, we could get them to learn the name of a lot of articles. The strategy worked. The children learned the name of everything we had. But that was the limit of our influence.

From this early lesson we learned two very important basic principles. First, when the teacher keeps control of the materials and structures herself as a vital part of the activity, the children will listen to and try to speak in her language. This is partly due to the fact that she is the initiator of the activity and controls the rules and materials of play. Second, the children pay significant attention to the language when the teacher wisely reinforce appropriate usage as part of the token economy that is an on-going process during every activity of the entire session.

When interacting with a small group of children, try to foster interaction between the participants. For example, “Ask Jim to show you how to fold the paper.” Or “Tell him what she said.” Or“Tell me what you like on your sandwich.”This type of interaction helps children find usage that enables them to communicate appropriately.

We use all above ways in our bilingual kindergarten program and it has been achieved a lot in our children English teaching. We hope the methodology adopted in our bilingual programs are applicable to the English teaching at different levels.

References:

[1]Timothy Shanahan & Diane August, Developing Reading and Writing in Second Language Learners，Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc,1997,8

[2]Liza M Tilson, The Colorful World of a Barrio Kindergarten ，Universe.com, 1997,2

[3]Alex Housen & Li Wei Jean-Marc Dewaele, Bilingualism，Multilingual Matters Ltd, 2002,6

[4]Rebecca D. Freeman, Bilingual Education and Social Change，Multilingual Matters Ltd, 1998,7

◇責(zé)任編輯：龍惠慧◇