9 Tips & Steps To Teach Young Learners More Effectively

Characteristics of Young Learners

Young learners are children who

• are developing quickly as individuals.
• learn in a variety of ways, for example, by watching, listening, imitating, and doing things.
• are not able to understand grammatical rules and explanations about language.
• try to make sense of situations by making use of non-verbal clues.
• talk in their mother tongue about what they understand and doing this helps them learn.
• can generally imitate the sounds they hear quite accurately and imitate the way adults speak in.
• are naturally curious.
• love to play and use their imagination.
• are comfortable with routines and enjoy repetition.
• have quite a short attention span so they need variety.

9 Tips to Teach Young Learners More Effectively

1. Make English learning enjoyable and fun – Remember you are influencing their attitude to language learning.
2. Don’t worry about their mistakes. Be encouraging. Make sure they feel comfortable, and not afraid to take part.
3. Use a lot of gestures, actions, and pictures to demonstrate what you mean.
4. Talk a lot to them in English, especially about things they can see.
5. Play games, sing songs, and say rhymes and chants together.
6. Tell simple stories in English, using pictures and acting with different voices.
7. Don’t worry when they use their mother tongue. You can answer a mother tongue question in English, and sometimes recast in English what they say in their mother tongue.
8. Constantly recycle the new language but don’t be afraid to add new things or to use words they want to know.
9. Plan lessons with varied activities, some to do while they’re quiet, others while they’re noisy, some to do while they’re sitting, and others while they’re standing and moving.

9 Steps to Teach Young Learners Any Task More Effectively

1. Introduce the activity clearly.
2. Activate their previous knowledge that relates to the current topic.
3. Give them clear instructions and make sure they know exactly what to do.
4. Model the activity with a good child.
5. Get two children to model the activity (Pair Work)
6. Specify some time for completing the activity in pairs (Private Pair Work)
7. Move around to monitor them, listen to, or look at their performance.
8. Get some pairs to do the activity in public (Public Pair Work).
9. Elicit the answers orally from them involving as many children as possible.

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