SUMMARY OF EFC

THEORIES OF TEACHING ENGLISH FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

1. Piaget
The child as an active laerner wants to know every thing.
In this theory focusses on how young children function in the world around them and influence on their mental deveopment. There are two ways the development takes place, according to piagetian psychology. They are:
Assimilation takes place without any change to the child.
Accommudation involves the child with invironment.
A child as sense-maker means make sense of the world actively. The child wants to know and to do every thing. Children also seek the mesning of action made by peaople in their life or in their action. They attempt make sense of many things actively. Piaget belives that cognitive development consist of four main periods. They are:
Sensory motor stage
Concrete operator formal operation
Pre-operasional stage.
Children can use their coversattion among 11 – 13 years old
2. Vygotsky
Focused on:
The children as social means that he / she needs another people to help him/her.
The connection between people and culture context, in which they act and interact in sharing experience of zone of approximal development (ZPD)
The ability to learn through intruction and mediation.
Social culture
Adults Teacher
In the ZPD
Vygotsky states that it is very useful to measure the intelegence or ability of children and the intelegence of children can be measured by whar ihe children can do with their skills.
Teacher Interaction Peer Interaction
Interactive discourse
3. Bruner
Bruner says that language is the most important tool for cognitive growth and he also investigate how adults can help the children to solve their problem. Scaffolding is bruner’s theory, it means that scaffolding is explainig to students and interacting to students to communicate, in scaffolding is holistic and must permeate all aspects of scientific teaching, if we answer.

CHILDREN LEARNING ENGLISH

In learning English as the foreign language, the children also make errors which can be seen as a sign of afective learning. These errors give us evidence that firs and second language. Children are not just imitating what they hear, but they are working out how the language system operates.
Ability and Characteristic building in English
Contexts of learning English
We do not to be a translator of the language to the students.
The ideal situation for children learning a second language is by Spoker language (Language Accompanying Action).
Teaching using ‘chunks’ of language. The chunks will be the output of the student, how the students able to expressing their feeling in English.
We used the simple ‘chunks’ of language (daily used). It is not for examples:
See you tomorrow
Good bye
Good night
What is your name?
Children as language learners
The ways to learn a language fast for learners:
Using language creativity
Going for meaning
Using ‘chunks’ of language
Having fun
Joining in the action
Talking their heads off
Feeling at home
How teacher belief about learning affect their learning
We may not be aware of how our beliefs affect the way
We respond to other people or the way we teach
There are ten principles for teaching English to young learners:
Stars where the child is
Encourage social interaction
Support negotiation of meaning and collaborative talk
Allow children to be active participants in the learning process
Pitch input within the zone of proximal development
Introduce language at discourse level
Plan meaning full and purpose full activities within a clear family context
Help learners to become more independent and autonomous
Develop a supportive, non-three a thing, enjoy able learning environment
Test and assess in the way what we teach
From those teaching-learning process will live, because there are interaction among teacher and students. Beside that, teacher is able to create condition for young learners:
Create a real need and desire to use English.
Provide suffient time for English
Provide exposure to varied and meaningful input with focus on communication.
Provide opportunities for children to experiment with their new language.
Provide plenty of opportunities to practice and use the language in different contexts.
Create a friendly atmosphere.
Provide feedback
Help children notice the underlying pattern in language.

LEARNING LANGUAGE THROUGH TASKS AND ACTIVITIES

We know that children as active learners will find a meaning of activity given to them. Children will work hard to find the meaning of whatever their teacher say to them. Someimes teacher does not notice children’s confusion; the children act it as if they understand the lesson. Actually, the teacher must have goals so that they can teach the children being active students in classroom.
The demands for chaildren can be divided in two catagories:
Cognitive demand means that this demand relates to concepts and understanding the world and people.for examples:
Understanding the way the grid works to show times action.
Work left or right across columns and top to bottom from one row to next.
Understand that one’s appears in each pictures
Understand that the picture show past action
Recognice the key action in each pictures
Language demand means that relates how to use foreign language, and how to use mother tongue in connection between learning and foreign language. For example :
Find the vocabulary to describe each action
Put the words together in the right order
Pronounce the words
Give correct stess and intonation to words and sentence
Understand teacher’s instruction, explainition, and feedback.
The key features of classroom tasks:
Have a unity and coherence
Means your task not only one activity, and between those activity
Should be as a bridge.
Using transition signals and link between are and the next activity.
Purpose and meaning (for children)
Means having a clear meaning weather they like to study.
Clear learning goals
Is something you have to consider as a teacher (after the class)
Beginning and end
E-g: When we conduct a game, there are two groups and we can announce who the winner is.
Involve learners actively
Create an activity that the children cannot involve actively
No physical movement makes the students bored.
There are six types of task support:
Cognitive Demand
It relates to the movement and some clues, what the movement to be e-g (how to understand a picture)?
Picture and speech buble should not make the students confuse. If it is about past event, we can give the date.
Language Demand
Give the student vocabulary or some words, pronounce by repeat, and repeat it again.
e-g: - Repair - Watch - Play Past + ed
- Pray - Ride - Study
Metalinguistic
Dealing with linguistic Talking about new language, clear explanations.
Involuement demand
Come from content and activity that is easy for the learners to engage with them.
e-g: Links to child’s interest and concerns.
Interactional Demand
Come from the type of interaction
e-g: Individual, pair or group work.
Physical Demand
Match to level of fine motor skills development.
Teacher tends to give activities or task by copying.
e-g: to write or draw
Task support and demand, they should be balance.

LEARNING THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE

There are two guiding principles for teaching spoken language, they are:
Meaning must come first, children drive to find meaning. As we know that children actively construct the meaning of context from their experience. When children are infant, they already try to communicate with other people about anythings and they also deveop their vocabulary, knowlegdge and experience wil make children to more understandable in learning language.
Learning discourse skill, actually children need to participate in discourse in order to build up their knowledge and skill. In this case, there are uses of discourse.
Discourse is constrasted with text to emphasize the use of language.
Discourse is contrasted to sentence.
To be effective spoken language, the students need to be able to adapt and adopt their oral language techniques and content to whatever social context they find themselves in. To ensure students develop these strategies, the skills and processes of listening and speaking must be understood, modeled, taught and practised within the classroom. Such as:
Encourage students to bring their ideas and background knowledge into class learning activities.
Establish strategies to manage all forms of communication to ensure all students have fair and equitable opportunities to develop their interpersonal speaking and listening skills, eg. large and small group discussions.
Provide opportunities for speaking, discussion, and expression of ideas, experiences and opinions across the whole curriculum. This will involve a range of experiences in which the size and type of audience, the situation and purpose will all vary.
Be a responsive listener to students' talk

LEARNING WORDS

In learning words, teacher must have strategies in which the strategies are absorbed or understood easily by students. The teacher also must know the level of children in learning language.
According to Wells, there are levels of learning language
Level of language learners
1. PERFORMANCE LEVEL
SD

2. FUNCTIONAL LEVEL
SMP
3. INFORMATIVE LEVEL
SMA
4. EPISTEMIC
MAHASISWA
Performance, it means children learn language with accompanying action / scaffolding. In this level, teacher can use media, according to Nation (1990) listed basic technique of explaining the meaning of new words.
By demontrasion picture:
Using an object
Using a cut-out picture
Using gesture
Performance action
Photographs
Drawing and or diagram on the board
Picture from books, TV, Video or Computer
By verbal explainition:
Analytical definition
Putting in a context
Translating
Functional, in this level focuses on transactional: opening (introduction, bussiness) and closing.
Informative, in this level focused on how to explain, to inform, and to speak.
Epistemic, in this level does not only performance, functional, and informative (complext) but also language as reflection written.
Language Acquisition Process
Spoken Language accompanying action
SD
SMP
SMA
PT/MAHASISWA
Language as reflection written

LEARNING GRAMMAR

Language is closely related to the human thought because language is actually the realization of what one is thinking or the oral representation of human thought. We cannot think without language, it is because we use language in our mind when we are thinking. Thus, since human behavior, habit and customs are underlined by way of thinking. Language is closely related to those behavior, habits and customs. In learning language, there are many rules to get a good sentence which is usually called grammar:
According to Johanna S. Destetafano (1977: 13) in the language, the learner and the school, said:
“Grammar is often used to refer to the forms students use in their speech and writing”
From those definitions, it can be said that grammar is used on what people do when they speak in their language – create sentences that are recognized as particular language.
Several starting points for thinking about grammar and young learner:
Grammar is necessery to express precise meaning in discourse.
Grammar is closely into vocabulary in learning and using the foreign language.
Grammar learning can evolve from the learning of chunks of language.
Talking about something meaningful with the child be a useful way to introduce new grammar.
Grammar can be thought with out technical label.
Many people are lazy to study about grammar because grammar is a set of word form and rules usage. Include teacher, they assume that students will absorb grammar rules as they hear, read and use the language in communication activities. This approach does not allow students to use as one of the major tools, they are as learners. The students need guide to understand what grammar is and how it works in the language. It means how to make sentences or phrases.
Cameron (2001), grammar does indeed have a place to young foreign language learners. The best help to develop children’s grammar in the foreign language is not by teaching grammar directly, but by being sensitive to opportunities for grammar learning that a rise in the classroom. Be a grammar-sensitiv teacher.
The goal of grammar to carry out students’s communication purposes:
Students need overt instruction that connects grammar point with larger communication contexts. Be providing example.
Students do not need to master ever aspect of each grammar point, only what they are relevant to immediate communication task.
Error correction is not always the first teacher’s responsibility.
Conclussion:
Grammar is central to teaching and learning of language. It is also one of the more difficult aspects of language to teach well.

LEARNING LITERACY SKILLS

Literacy means able to read and write, when it is put in discourse (text both spoken and written)
Literary is the use of socially, historically, and culturally situated practice of creating and interpreting meaning through texts.
According to the Government Regulation PP No. 19, 2005. Language education should develop Language Competence with special emphasis on reading and writing according to the literacy level-set up for every level of education.
Literacy levels:
Per formative level (SD)
Function level (SMP)
Informational level (SMA)
Epistemic (College)
In teaching literary skills, the teacher should not focus on phonic and do not really emphasize on it.
E.g.: Teach alphabet by reading aloud and whispering.
A: Apple
B: Banana
The first source for very young beginners is listening (with language accompanying action) they try to get as much as information (absolving knowledge), when get the point answer by gestures Yes/No.
Talking about literacy skills for children, remember that the purpose is creating classroom discourse school discourse
Per formative level, (language accompanying action) learners can:
Use English to accompany actions
Participate in classroom and school interaction
Recognize simple written English

LEARNING THROUGH STORIES

In learning through story teacher gives efforts to the students by giving questions about the story. In telling stories teacher should use his/her own word and it must be followed by action because the words in the text so hard to children to understand. Here the teacher dominates the class.
There are some ways in learning through stories:
Parallelism Pattern language repetition
Rich vocabulary learning vocabulary from stories through reading stories
Learning vocabulary from stories through listening
Alliteration
The use of words that have the some initial consonant
Contrast
Different between character, action, or setting in the stories for children
Metaphor
The character-telling story to the student in metaphor words. E.g.: beautiful girl
Intertextuality
Children should write about what they have talked about or read about
Narrative/dialogue
Teacher gives the messages from the text of story by doing tell
Action Give question
Quality of good stories
Stories must simple
Have character and plot that engages children
Comprehensible for children
Include fantastical beings or animals in imaginary words
Have qualities of content, organization, and suitable language use
There are three steps of language learning tasks using the story:
Preparation activity brainstorming vocabulary
Core activity reading the story
Follow up activity vocabulary learning

CHILDREN FRIENDLY LEARNING RESOURCES

How are the resources used by the students? Resources are dealing with searching new information (target language), it can be inside and outside
Making and using your own resources
There are 2 resources are made by teacher for a lesson, they are worksheet and spinner.
Worksheet
Introduce daily activities
E.g.: I brush my teeth
The resources are calendar, picture, cards, etc
Group and drill
The resource is pupils itself
Numbering and pictures
The resources are some card of pictures (numbered)
Choose an activity and name it
E.g.: Pupils guess the activity
The resource is pupils itself
Matching pictures and sentences strips
The resources are sentences strips and pictures
Song about daily activities
The resources are pupils
Worksheet read and fills in the blank with the correct word the resource are worksheet.
Spinner
It is consist of some pictures
Telling story (spinner with picture of six different characters on it)
E.g.: A monkey, a dog, a boy, a girl, a women, etc.
Question word (spinner with a question word written on each section)
E.g.: What, when, where, why, how, yes, or not.
Parts of the body (spinner with pictures of part of the body)
E.g.: leg, hand arm, head, finger, eyes, etc.
Using pupils as resources
They can act as partner for other children to practice language
They can act as tutors to help each other to learn English
They can act as models or demonstrators to help you show other children what to do
Organizing resources in ways, which involve pupil
The teacher gives discussion material in each group. Then she comes to every group to ask for what the student have discussed. By this, the students get using the language through interaction between student and other student, and student with their teacher.
The use of classroom display to create an attractive and dynamic learning environment
Classroom display creates a stimulating environment that attracts and motivates for learning.
E.g.: the teacher gives a picture (for example about holiday) then the teacher asks the students about the situation of the picture with some options. Next, the teacher asks the students, what they have to bring when they go to the beach.

THEME-BASED TEACHING AND LEARNING

Theme-based teaching and learning can be taught in an integrated way, without being separated in subject areas that have to be taught at specific time by separate teachers. Teacher must be mastery all study. It main that purpose of theme-base teaching and learning to get a good condition in learning teaching process / conducive of situation in classroom.
Planning theme-based teaching learng.
Advance VS online planning
Finding at theme.
Planning content (Cameron; 2001: 188-189)
Planing language learning tasks ( Cameron; 2001: 190)
As a teacher, we have to able creating the theme based teaching and learning. Theme based is a teaching learning process in which all the subjects covered in a topic and done by a teacher (guru kelas) it is too demanding
For example: the topic is potato. It is also talking about:
Geography (PKPS)
The students should be able to draw a map from their house to market. (They do not really fax attention to the direction because children usually cannot do it)
Math
The students should able to count.
E.g.: How many potatoes are there in the picture? (Number)
Art
They should be able to draw and coloring a potato
Technology
Vegetable vehicle
History
Where the potatoes come from? etc
The problem is some times the teacher forgets the vocabulary, the grammar implicitly
The point is ‘chunk’ of language (the dominant thing of theme based teaching and learning)
The procedures of creating theme, based teaching and learning:
Think first what the purpose of each subject based on the syllabus of all subjects (all item)
Select an interesting topic
Students can suggest any topic
Make a list so the theme will not be similar
The teacher should be able to know all the curriculum subjects.
Match the theme with the subjects

ASSESSMENT AND LANGUAGE LEARNING

Assessmen is used how asses the students, it means the gathering of information for specific purpose, it determines how well an individual child or a group of children are doing. Assessment should measure what students will do and what they know rather than measure what they are not able to do and do not know.
From those explainition, it can be concluded that assessment is used to measure the students’ willingness with many methods the teaher can teach to students, so the students can learn as what they want, such as using media game, pictures etc.
Concepts of assessment:
Validity, it measures the skill. It is supposed to measure with spesific group of learners. Pay attention to learners who will be making the test.
Realibility, the tests are realiable, if the results are consistent over a period. It means that the results are consistents / realiable.
From all explainition above, it can be concluded that Theories of Teaching English for Young Learners are:
Theory of Locke
Locke said that children like a piece of paper (blank slate). As teacher, we have to stimulate the students like blank slate.
Theory of Piaget Children as active learners
We have to teach where the children are.
The implication of Piaget’s theories:
Practice in the classroom
The children give respon about the room and what the teacher said
Teacher use book with picture
Theory of Vygotsky
Children as social being, means when the child learn, they are not alone, but they learn with their parent, friends and teacher.
The implication: words and meaning
Theory of Bruner Scaffolding talk
Means the language used by teacher to manage the classroom (Teaching-Learning process)
There are some ways to create interesting activity:
Using ‘chunks’ of language
Pre fabricated expression put in the context
Language accompanying action
(ZPD)
According to wells, there are four steps to learn English:
Permormative level Elementary School
Functional level Junior High School
Informational level Senior High School
Epistemal level College Students the students
Able to transfer the knowledge using English
Language Acquisition Process
Spoken Language accompanying action
SD
SMP
SMA
PT/MAHASISWA
Language as reflection written