Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies (45 page)

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Authors: Michelle Maxom

Tags: #Foreign Language Study, #English as a Second Language, #Language Arts & Disciplines, #General

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You can find a number of dedicated course books for young learners. I list some titles in Chapter 8. Most of these include ideas for games and activities within the syllabus but here are two books on the market that are more focused:

✓

Children’s Games Photocopiable Resource Pack’
written by Maria Toth and published by Macmillan is crammed full of activities for young learners at different levels.

✓

Five-Minute Activities: A Resource Book of Short Activities
’ written by Ur and Wright and published by Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers is not actually aimed at young learners but many of the games are great for kids because of their short attention span.

Chapter 20: Getting Youth on Your Side: Coping with Young Learners
291

Most series of course books are accompanied by teachers’ and resource books that contain games and activities. Even those designed for adult learners give you great ideas which you can transfer to children’s topics.

When you adapt activities from books, use colourful cards that kids can move around and attach amusing pictures, perhaps something they can colour in afterwards.

Trying other activities

Depending on the resources available to you,

chosen newspaper words directly onto the card

you can invent your own activities to practise

and write the rest in with their own handwriting.

language.

Award a prize for the most original.

Here are a couple I use; the first activity is By the end of the lesson, they’ll have learnt fun if you have English newspapers or maga-several new words and practised sentence

zines around. The second requires no special

structure in English.

resources at all. What they have in common is

That’s a good question!

that the children don’t need too much involve-

ment from you so they can be more in control of

It’s always best to let students generate

their own learning.

language themselves so here’s a game that

does just that.

Making a newspaper collage

On strips of paper ask students to write down

For this you need a newspaper or two (comics

questions they’d like to ask their classmates.

for lower-level students), scissors, card, five

They may be about their favourite things or more

or six boxes or envelopes and glue. Make sure

along the lines of ‘What would you do if . . .?’

that everyone has access to a page or two of

the newspaper.

When they’ve finished, go through and weed

out any that are just too cheeky or inappropriate

You simply chose a particular part of speech

for other reasons. If you have a good question in

(verbs, nouns, adverbs and so on) and give poor grammar, put it on the board so that other students a time limit of a couple of minutes to

members of the class can help correct it. Try to

find examples of this kind of word on the page.

include about twice as many questions as there

They can underline the words and you then are students so that you retain the element of need to do some feedback to make sure that

suspense. And now put the questions in a hat

they’ve got it right.

or something similar.

Next you get them to cut out all the examples

Finally you go from student to student and ask

they’ve found and put them in the designated

each person to choose a question without look-

box or envelope. After a few rounds you end up

ing. On the flip of a coin, decide whether the

with collections of nouns and verbs and so on.

student has to answer the question or nominate

Finally, have groups of students pick three someone else to do so.

words from each collection without looking. By the end of this lesson, the students should They have to think up a short story using all

have practised asking questions in English and

their words, no matter how bizarre, and write

they should also know quite a bit more about

it out on a large piece of card. They stick their

each other.

292
Part V: What Kind of Class Will I Have?

Tuning-In to Songs and Nursery Rhymes

Nursery rhymes are great fun because they contain the kind of vocabulary that’s appropriate for children, for example names of animals and parts of the body. They also contain simple actions in nursery rhymes, which kids can do the actions to. However, when children repeat and act out rhymes, they don’t see it as learning; it’s more of a game.

Choosing the right song

When it comes to choosing a nursery rhyme or song for teaching English, resist the temptation to simply choose your favourites so you can indulge in a bit of nostalgia from your childhood. Think about it! Some rhymes make no real sense at all and certainly won’t do well under scrutiny. Take this line for example:

Ring a ring o’ roses, a pocket full of posies . . .

Songs that contain words you think are useful are actually a better bet.

You may not analyse all the words at this stage but as students progress in English they should be able to recall the rhyme and have some common English words at their disposal. Choose nursery rhymes with an easy, memorable tune and beat so everyone can clap and sing along (or at least hum at first). Rhymes of more than eight lines are hard to memorise unless they’re very repetitive. In addition, go for rhymes that are easy enough to pronounce and easy to act out.

Kids also like to perform actions to the rhyme because it helps them remember and adds to the meaning. I’m a big fan of good old Incey Wincey Spider myself, because the hands are moving all the way through.

Teaching your class to sing

So how do you actually teach foreign children an English rhyme? You don’t need to break the song down in all its parts. Only certain words deserve a bit of focus. Words that are accompanied by a mime or action are an easy target because the movement helps explain the meaning. You can also highlight words that are part of your course syllabus such as numbers and colours.

You should decide what the rhyme is basically about and teach the vocabulary that describes the theme. So for Incey Wincey Spider, focus on ‘spider’,

‘climb’ and ‘spout’. For Ten Green Bottles teach the number and the colour along with ‘bottle’ and ‘wall’.

Chapter 20: Getting Youth on Your Side: Coping with Young Learners
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The basic steps to teaching your class a song are:

1. Teach the vocabulary for parts of the body with pictures for the
children to label – and lots of repetition.

2. Arrange the children in a circle and begin singing the song slowly,
doing the actions as well.

If you sing much more slowly than usual, they can associate the words and actions easily. They can also hear the sounds of the words distinctly so you don’t end up with vague, muffled approximations of the words. You may have to repeat a song three or four times when you first introduce it. The kids may not join in with the words but they probably pick up the actions. However, regularity is the key. So if you sing it again the next lesson you should find that they start to sing along with a few of the words they recognise.

‘One finger one thumb’ is a great nursery rhyme which has actions too. It teaches the parts of the body – finger, thumb, arm, leg, head – and some imperatives (commands): stand up, sit down, turn around.

The idea is to waggle your finger and thumb. Then to push out your arm and leg, nod and follow all the commands in time with the song.

Here’s the whole rhyme in case you don’t know it. You’ll have to ask around for the tune unless you have a recording of it!

One finger, one thumb, keep moving.