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TEACHING
ACROSS AGE LEVELS
A. Teaching Children
First,
children’s widespread success in acquiring second languages belief a tremendous
subconscious effort devoted to the task. The difference between children and adults
lies primary in the contrast between the child’s spontaneous, peripheral
attention to language forms and adult’s overt, focal awareness of and attention
to those forms. Seconds, adults are not necessarily less successful in their
efforts. Studies have shown that adults, in fact, can be superior in a number
of aspects of acquisition. They can learn and retain a larger vocabulary. They
can utilize various deductive and abstract processes to shortcut the learning
of grammatical and other linguistics concepts. Third, the popular claim fails
to differentiate very young children (4 to 6 year-olds) from pubescent children
(12 to 13) and the whole range of ages in between. There are actually many
instances of 6 to 12 year-olds children manifesting significant difficulty in
acquiring a second language for a multitude of reasons.
Teaching
ESP to school-age children, therefore, is not merely a matter of setting them
loose on a plethora of authentic language tasks in the classroom. In fact, for
some TOSEL professionals (Cameron, 2003) the challenges of teaching children
warrant a separate acronym: TEYL (Teaching English for Young Learners). Teacher
reference books are devoted solely to the issues, principles, and methodology
surrounding the teaching of children (Linse, 2005; Moon, 2000; Pinter, 2006;
Reilly & Ward, 1997). To successfully teach children a second language
requires specific skills and intuitions that differ from appropriate for adult
teaching.
1.
Intellectual
Development
Since
children are still in an intellectual stage of what Piaget (1972) called
concrete operations, we need to remember their limitations. Rules,
explanations, and other slightly abstract talk about language must be
approached with extreme caution. Here are some rules:
a.
Don’t explain
grammar using terms like present progressive or relative clause.
b.
Rules stated in
abstract terms should be avoided.
c.
Some grammatical
concepts, especially at the upper levels of childhood, can be called to
learners’ attention by showing them certain patterns and examples.
d.
Certain more
difficult concepts or pattern require more repetition than adults need.
2.
Attention Span
Differences
between adults and children are attention span. First, it is important to
understand what attention span means.
a.
Because children
are focused on there here and now, activities should be designed to capture
their immediate interest.
b.
A lesson needs a
variety of activities to keep interest and attention alive.
c.
A teacher
m\needs to be animated, lively, and enthusiastic about the subject matter.
d.
A sense of humor
will go a long way in keeping children laughing and learning.
e.
Children have a
lot of natural curiosity.
3.
Sensory Input
Children
need to have all five senses stimulated.
a.
Peeper your
lessons with physical activity.
b.
Projects and
other bands-on activities go a long way toward helping children to internalize
language.
c.
Sensory aids
help children to internalize concepts.
d.
Remember that
your own nonverbal language is important because children will indeed attend
very sensitively to your facial features, gestures, and body language.
4.
Affective
Factors
Teachers
need to help them to overcome such potential barriers to learning.
a.
Help your
students to laugh with each other at various mistakes that they all make.
b.
Be patient and
supportive to build self-esteem, yet at the same time be firm in your
expectations of students.
c.
Elicit as much
oral participation as possible from students, especially the quieter ones, to
give them plenty of opportunities for trying things put.
5.
Authentic,
Meaningful Language
Children
are focused on what this new language can actually be used for here and now.
a.
Children are
good at sensing language that is not authentic; therefore, canned or stilted
language will likely be rejected.
b.
Language needs
to be firmly context embedded.
c.
A whole language
approach is essential.
B. Teaching Adults
Adults
have superior cognitive abilities that can render them more successful in
certain classroom endeavors. Their level of shyness can be equal to or greater
than that of children, but adults usually have acquired a self-confidence not
found in children. And, because of adults’ cognitive abilities, they can at
least occasionally deal with language that isn’t embedded in a here and now
context. Five variables that apply to children keep in mind some specific
suggestions and caveats.
a.
Adults are more
able to handle abstract rules and concepts.
b.
Adults have
longer attention spans for material that may not be intrinsically interesting
to them.
c.
Sensory input
need not always be as varied with adult, but one of the secrets of lively adult
classes is their appeal to multiple senses.
d.
Adults often
bring a modicum of general self-confidence into a classroom.
e.
Adults, with
their more developed abstract thinking ability, are better able to understand a
contact-reduced segment of language.
Some implications for general classroom
management do’s and don’ts.
a.
Do remember that
even though adults cannot express complex thinking in the new language, they
are nevertheless intelligent grown-ups with mature cognition and fully develop
emotions.
b.
Don’t treat
adult in your class like children by: (1) calling them kids, (2) using
caretaker talk, or (3) talking down to them.
c.
Do give your
students as many opportunities as possible to make choices about what they will
do in and out of the classroom.
d.
Don’t discipline
adults in the same way you would children.
C. Teaching Teens
Therefore
appropriate to consider briefly the sort of variables that apply in the
teaching of young adults, teens and high school-age children whose ages range
between 12 and 18 or so. Perhaps because of the enigma of teaching teenagers,
little is specifically said in the language teaching field about teaching at
this level. Nevertheless, some thoughts are worth verbalizing, even if in the
form of simple reminders.
1.
Intellectual
capacity adds abstract operational though around the age of 12. Therefore, some
sophisticated intellectual processing is increasingly possible. Complex
problems can be solved with logical thinking.
2.
Attention spans
are lengthening as a result of intellectual maturation, but once again, with
many diversions present in a teenager’s life, those potential attention spans
can easily be shortened.
3.
Varieties of
sensory input are still important, but again increasing capacities for
abstraction lesson the essential nature of appealing to all five senses.
4.
Factors
surrounding ego, self-image, and self-esteem are at their pinnacle. Teens are
ultrasensitive to how others perceive their changing physical and emotional
selves along with their mental capabilities.
5.
Secondary school
students are of course becoming increasingly adult like in their ability to
make those occasional diversions from the here and now nature of immediate
communicative contexts to well on grammar point or vocabulary item.
TEACHING
ACROSS PROFICIENCY LEVELS
A. Defining Proficiency Levels
Is there a standard set of guidlines by which these three
mysterious terms may be uniformly understood? The answer is a qualified yes, in
the form of the ACTFL Proficiency
Guidlines ( American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, 1999).
The guidelines, procuded by the American Council on the
Teaching of foreign languages (ACTFL), are a recognized proficiency standard in
many language teaching circles. The current version of the guidlines is
historically related to what for many years was referred to as “FSI levels” of
speaking proficiency. The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines were created to expand
on the FSI/ILR levels so that listening, reading, writing would also be
included. The Guidelines have one other important difference: they are not
connected with any one proficiency test, as the FSI/ILR levels are. Instead,
they were created to guide any test-maker in the process of assessment.
B. Teaching Beginning Levels
Many teachers consider the beginning level of
language instruction to be the most challenging. Since students at this level
have little or no prior knowledge of the target language, the teacher becomes a
central determiner in whether students accomplish their goals. The following 10
factors will help you to formulate an approach to teaching beginners.
1. Students’
cognitive learning processes
In
those first few days and even weeks of language learning, virtually all of the
students processing with respect to the second language itself is in a focal,
controlled mode. Therefore, you can expect to engage in plenty of repetition of
a limited number of words, phrases and sentences. Even in the first few days of
class, however, you can coax your students into some peripheral processing by
getting them to use practiced language for genuinely meaningful purposes.
2. The
role of the teacher
Beginning
students are highly dependent on the teacher for models of language and so a
teacher-centered or teacher-fronted classroom is appropriate for some of your
classroom time. In a second language context where instruction is carried out
in the target language, virtually all of your class time will be
teacher-controlled. Since students have no means, in the second language
anyway, of controlling the class period, the ones are on you to plan topics,
activity types, time-on-task, etc.
3. Teacher
talk
It
is appropriate to slow your speech somewhat for easier comprehension, but don’t
slow it so much that it loses its naturalness. Use simple vocabulary and
structures that are at or just slightly beyond their level.
4. Authenticity
of language
Be authentic
language, this is just as important at the beginning levels. Simple greetings
and instructions, for example, are authentic and yet manageable.
5. flueny and accurancy
Fluency is goal at this level
but only within limited utterance lengths. Fluency does not have to appply only
to long utterances. The “flow” of
language is important to establish ,from the beggining , in reasonably short segment.
In teaching skills, students
need to practice freely and openly without fear of being corrected at every
minor flaw. The teacher need to correct some selected grammatical and
phonological errors .
6. student creativity
The ultimate goal of learning a
languanaeg is to be able to comprehend and produce it in unrehersed situations,
which demans both receptive and productive creativity.
7. techniques (activities, procedures, task)
Short, simple technique must be
used. Some mechanical techniques are appropiate-choral repetition and other
drilling. A variety of techniques is important because of limited language
capacity
8. listening and speaking goals
Notice that the listening and
speaking functions for beginner are meaningful and authentic communication
tasks . they are limited more grammar,vocabulary, and length of utterance than
by communicative function.
9. reading and writing goals
Advertisements, forms,and
recipes are grist for the beginners reading mill, while writen work may involve
forms, lists and simple notes and letters. The most important contextual factor
that you should bear in mind teaching reading and writing to begginers is their
literacy level in their own native laguage.
10. grammar
A typical beginning levelwill
deal at the outset with very simple verb forms, personal pronouns, definite
articles , singular and plural nouns and simple sentence in a progression of
grammatical topics from simple to complex.
C.
Teaching
Intermediate Levels
Now
turn your attention to that vague curricular territory that we call
intermediate, where students have progressed beyond novice stages to an ability
to sustain basic communicative tasks, to establish some minimal fluency, to
deal with a few unrehearsed situations, to self-correct on occasion, to use a
few compensatory strategies, and generally to “get along” in the language
beyond mere survival. The picture changes somewhat. Your role and the students’
capacities change. Consider the same ten factors.
Students
have developed some of their abilities of learning the target language, so the
teacher has to apply different teaching methods in the class. Teacher has to
dare students ask questions; make comments during the class to their own
learning. The teacher is able to use more advanced word according to the level.
1. Students’ cognitive learning processes
2. The role of the teacher
3. Teacher talk
4. Authenticity of language
5. Fluency and accuracy
6. Student creativity
7. Techniques
8. Listening and speaking goals
9. Reading and writing goals
10. Grammar
D. Teaching
Advanced Levels
As
students move up the developmental ladder, getting closer and closer to their
goals, developing fluency along with a greater degree of accuracy, able to
handle virtually any situation in which target language use is demanded, they
become “advanced” students. At the very top of this ladder is what the ACTEFL
Proficiency Guidelines describe as the “superior” level, comparable in most
aspect to an educated, so in order to be more in keeping with reality, we will
simply focus on what the Guidelines describe as the “advanced” level.
Students
have developed not only their reading and listening comprehension but also
their fluency in speaking. Techniques can be like group debates and
argumentation, complex role-plays, scanning and skimming reading material.
a. Students’
cognitive learning processes
b. The
role of the teacher
c. Teacher
talk
d. Authenticity
of language
e.
Fluency and
accuracy
f.
Student creativity
The joy of
teaching at this level is in those moments of student perfomance when you know
that they are now able to apply classroom material to real contexts beyond.
g.
Techniques
techniques can
now tap into a full range of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competencies.
Typical activities include group debates and argumentation, and complex role
plays.
h.
Listening and speaking goals
At this level
students can focus more carefully on all the sociolinguistic and pragmatic
nuances of language. The teacher needs to be on the lookout for common areas
needing work and guide students accordingly as they fine-tune their production
and comprehension in term of register, style, the status of the interlocutor,
the specific context of a conversational exchange, turn-taking, topic
nomination and termination, topic-changing, and culturally conditioned language
constraints.
i.
Reading and writing goals
Reading and
writing skills similarly progress closer and closer to native-speaker
competence as students learn more about such things as critical reading, the
role of schemata in interpreting written texts, and how to write a document
related to one’s profession (laboratory reports, records of experimental
research finding, etc.
j.
Grammar
Linguistic
metalanguage may now serve a more useful role as students perceive its
relevance to refining their language. Your classes need not become saturated
with language about language, but well-targeted deductive grammar has its
place.
REFERENCE
Pinter,
A. (2017). Teaching young
language learners. Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press.
Brown,
H Douglas. (2007). Teaching by Principle and
Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy (3rd Edition). Pearson Longman: San Francisco.
Linse,
C. (2006). Practical English language teaching: PELT young learners (1
edition). New York: McGraw-Hill
Moon,
J. (2000). Children
learning English. Oxford, UK: Macmillan Education.
Reilly,
V & Ward, S.
(1997).
Very
young learners. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign
Languages. (1999). ACTFL proficiency guidelines—speaking. Hastings-on-Hudson,
NY. Author available online at http://www.actfl.org
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