LET

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LETS PLAY THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE GAME

• Workshop for Teachers of English
• Level Elementary school
• A1

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Ezequiel Alvarez Cuesta

• Teacher of English Language and Culture
• Universidad del Atlántico
• Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación
• Idiomas Extranjeros

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LETS 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

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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.

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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...

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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.

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Intellectual Development

• H. Douglas Brown recommends
• Dont explain grammar using terms likepresent
  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.

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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.

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Here and now
Sense of humor
Interest
Curiosity
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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.

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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.

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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.

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T.P.R.
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Influence of Right brain
Influence of 1st Language acquisition process
Affectivity How you feel is Very important
T.P.R.
To learn a language We listen first
Use of commands
Teachers voice And gestures Are key resources.
By listening Children give A physical response
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Web sites

• The elephant song
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vyihq8BIhL9c

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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.

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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

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Oral language
Knowledge About the speaker
Non-verbal language
Schemata
Knowledge about The context
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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.

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Listening Strategies

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

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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 Lets 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.

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Reading Skill
knowledge of the world
Knowledge of the topic -schema-
Knowledge Of the format
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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

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Vocabulary
Grammar
Social language
Fluency
SPEAKING
Register
Body language
Pronuntiation
Listening
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Speaking Strategies

• Using a mascot This is a succesful way to
  present language to children
• Teddy, can you swim?
• No, I cant, but I can sing.
• Teddy, do you like carrots?
• Ugh, no!
• What about bananas?
• Yes, I love them.

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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.

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Writing Skill
Culture
Schema
Language
Intentionality
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Writing Activities

• Copying
• Matching
• Organising and copying
• Dictation
• Fill in exercises
• Letters
• cards

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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.

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Constructive and creative comprehension
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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

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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...

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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.

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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.

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Communicative Competence
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Communicative approach

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

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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.

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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.

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Communicative approach

• The role of the teacher is that of facilitatior
  and guide.
• Students are encouraged to construct meaning
  through interaction with others.

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Communicative Skills
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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.

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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.

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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.

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Project Work
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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.

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