this is slide about how to teaching speaking to young children

1. 1. Introduction
In this chapter, will be discussed about some of the points which are related to
teaching English for young learner, those are :
a. A description of speaking and the role of speaking in children’s
development of their first language.
b. Background information on the teaching of speaking.
c. An explanation of the development of speaking skills, including specific
issues that you will encounter in the classroom.
d. A number of different techniques and activities which you can use with
young learner.
e. Suggestions for managing the noise level in the classroom.
TEACHING SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS
Teaching Speaking
has been undervalued
and English language
teachers have
continued to teach
speaking just as a
repetition of drills or
memorization of
dialogues.
Young Learners
are individuals of very
early age who are
interested in many
new things such as a
foreign language,
English.
2. What is speaking?
Speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of
verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts. Speaking is a crucial part
of second language learning and teaching.
There are many different ways that children play with words and language
beginning with the tickling rhymes that they hear as babies and continuing with
other sort of play which involve both the form and meaning of language
(Cook,2000).
When children beginning speaking, they experiment and play with the
utterances that are made to form words and phrases (Example: bye-bye or go
bye-bye)
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2. Play is a vital and important aspect of a child’s development and language is a
part of that play.
3. Background to the teaching of speaking
Speaking is equally important in children’s overall language development.Young
learners are like sponges, they soak up everything we say and how we say it.
Thus clear and correct pronunciation is of vital importance, since young learners
repeat exactly what they hear.
Song
Poem
Rhyme
Chant
is a wonderful way of making students
sing/talk and at the same time (unconsciously)
work
at
their
grammar,
vocabulary,
pronunciation
Try to include the above-mentioned activities by providing learners with those
that require total physical response, shortly known as "TPR".
4. The development of speaking skills
Young learners, since they are “young” and their speaking equipment has not yet
developed perfectly, will probably have limitations inspeaking. Young children
learning English as a foreign language do not develop English Language skills
more readily than older learners. However, they have a clear advantage when it
comes to pronunciation if they begin learning English as a foreign or second
language at an early age (Birdsong, 1999). Nevertheless, there are some
phonemes which children have difficulty with.
Sometimes the cause of difficulty can be as simple as baby teeth that have fallen
out and are not yet replaced by adult teeth. Or a child may have just received
dental braces and may be slightly struggling with different phonemes because of
this. So, teacher sometimes needs to carefully look at children’s mouths when
they are having trouble pronouncing different sounds. Also, teachers need
consider about Mean Length of Utterances (MLU) and overgeneralization of
errors to avoid unrealistic expectations. The expectations for children learning
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3. English should not be greater or more demanding than the expectations for
children learning to speak in english as their native language.
Mean Length of Utterances
MLU are the number of morphemes found in sample of a child’s utterances. A
morpheme is the smallest unit of a meaning in a word. There is some debate
aboutwhat the MLU is for children of different ages. However, it is widely
accepted thatvery young children produce MLUs which are shorter than older
children. The expectations for speaking for children should be tailored to their
development.
Pronounciation and young learners
As stated above, when young children are learning to speak in english as their
native language, they sometimes have difficulty articulating spesific phonemes
such as /th/ or /r/. These difficulties can occur due to developmental factors in
children of different, with them has different abilities, they become able to
articulate the different phonemes of english,so an English teacher should pay
attention more deeply to his student, A native speaker of english have difficulty
articulating /r/ and she learned to therapists and therapists fortunately it helped
her learn how to properly articulate /r/.
5. Classroom techniques and activities
Speaking activities are an important part of any young learners’ ESL and EFL
classroom. When teaching speaking, it is especially important to select activities
which match the objectives of your program. And then, the specific techniques
and tasks that you choose should be based on the aims of the program coupled
with the learners’ stages of development.
Audiolingual Method (ALM)
The Audiolingual Method to language teaching is based on the notion that one
can learn language by developing habits based on the patterns of language
(Celce-Murcia, 2001).
There are two important featuresof ALM which can easily be adapted for young
learner classroom: drill with choral response and dialogues. The first feature
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4. typical of ALM is drills aimed at getting learners to practice using the patterns
that occur in language.
Dialogues
The second feature of ALM is dialogue. Dialogues provide learners with
grammatically controlled scripts that they can use in real life.
Using puppets to introduce dialogues
Teachers working with young learner are often aware that children feel more
comfortable talking with a puppet than with an adult (Slattery and Willis, 2003).
The use of puppets is very appropriate in the young-learner classroom. Puppets
also make the language-learning activity more fun!
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
CLT is an approach and a philosophical orientation that connects classroom
based language learning with the language that learners need in order to
communicate outside of the classroom (Nunan, 2003). The examples are role
playing a flight attendant and an airline passenger, role play finding a pair of
lost things and playing board games.
Games
Play is a purposeful activity and games are a part of playing. As such, games are
a very appropriate teaching technique in the young learner classroom. The
example is Concentration, also known as Memory. This is a game which can be
played with partners on in small groups. The game is made with two sets of 10
matching cards with vocabulary item that children are studying. The 20 cards
are placed face down on a table. Each of the players says sentences prompted by
the cards that they turn over. If he cards are the same, the player gets to “keep”
them until the end of the game. If the cards are different, then the child places
them face down in the same spot they originally found them. The winner is the
player with the most cards at the end of the game.
Talking and writing box
The Talking and Writing Box is made of pictures that children have self-selected
and are interesting to them. When children are asked to talk about the pictures
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5. on their box, they talk about things that are of interest to them because they
have selected the pictures for the box. When talking about their pictures,
children become animated because they are talking about something of interest
to them. By using Talking and Writing Box, children are able to personalize the
information that they share.
Teaching pronunciation
a. Rhymes, finger play, and chants
It help teacher speaking children learn how to pronounce words correctly.
We can select rhymes and finger plays that focus on a specific phonemes
or sound or set of sounds.
b. Using mirrors
For help the young learners learn about their pronunciation, we can use
mirrors in the class. The children who have difficulty with certain sounds
often do not know how to form their lips and mouths in such a way as to
correctly articulate the sounds. And the mirrors probably work so well
because they give children an awareness of how easily they can adjust
their pronunciation.
c. Tongue twisters
Tongue Twisters generally have the same phoneme repeated over and
over again. It is hard to articulate the same sound over and over again.
One of the tongue twisters is how many peppers did Peter pick. Children
adore tongue twisters because they perceive saying the sounds as a game
or challenge.
Error Correction
As the teacher of young learners must spend time correcting not only behavior
but also errors. Bailley (2005) points out that it is not necessary for a teacher to
respond to all errors. We can handle errors by modeling and providing children
with the correct grammar or pronunciation.
Example:
T
: What does she do at 6.00?
S
: She do her math homework at 6.00
T
: She does her math homework at 6.00. yes, she does her math homework
at 6.00.
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6. In above example, the teacher notices the error and then models the correct
response rather than telling the children that they were wrong.
6. Managing speaking activities
When looking at language teaching, it is important to consider the technical
knowledge. For the pure sake of survival, it is crucial that you have well-planned
lessons, that contain activities where children are interested and stay on task.
Managing the noise level
During a speaking activity, the noise level alone can quickly escalate and disturb
other classes. Teacher who do not use communicative approaches in their
claasroom can be especially harsh if the noise level seems to become too high. As
part of a well-rounded English-language curriculum, children should be given
nomerous opportunities to speak in class, Children can be taught a number of
signals to become quiet. Do not try to shout over children. You can use the
fishbowl technique in the activity.
7. Speaking in the classroom
In addition to games, children's coursebooks often help children practice specific
language patterns and pre-scripted conversations. Sometimes it is hard to find
activities that only focus on speaking since so many of the pages also contain
print which adds reading to the activity.
8. Conclusion
Speaking is equally important in children’s overall language development.Young
learners are like sponges, they soak up everything we say and how we say it.
Thus clear and correct pronunciation is of vital importance, since young learners
repeat exactly what they hear.
The teacher can use the Audio Lingual Method and Communicative Language
Teaching as appropriate methods to teaching speaking for young learners. And
then, as the teacher has to choose the classroom techniques and activities which
are fun and comfortable.When managing the classroom situation, the teacher can
teach a number of signals to become quiet. Do not try to shout over children.
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