TeachingEnglish
Teaching young learners
Submitted by anastasia2007spb on 8 March, 2011 - 19:03
Tell me, please, what is the best way to start teaching young learners? Should I introduce them to letters first or to the sounds? For 6-year olds it's quite hard to differentiate letters and sounds as they just start to get to know the system of their own language at this age.
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Hi,
I teach 6 to 10 year olds in primary schools and my experience is that they first should learn the phonetics of a language before they are required to read it. It's much like learning L1, children learn the spoken language way before they even learn the alphabet!
good luck with it!
With 6 year olds I wouldn't start with sounds or letters. I would use words - vocabulary of interest to them, making use of everyday objects or pictures and classroom items. Say the word and hope they repeat it back to you, then say it again so they hear the correct pronunciation. Then ask What is it? Give the answer and let them repeat it again. Make use of songs such as 'The wheels on the bus' which are repetitive and use everyday language. Build a vocabulary of nouns because these are easiest and have a visual context. By six they can probably count, so count objects, identify figures when they are ready. They will know colours so can transfer the knowledge from mother tongue when you pick groups of objects that are red. Then put the adjective with the noun. Big and little could come next. Concentrate on the oral, which is hard work, but they could perhaps do jigsaws or colour with you repeating vocabulary. You can show easy books with plenty of pictures. As a key stage one teacher I have taught many six year olds and also had second language children with limited English in my classes.
I'd try to teach them the sounds through vocabulary and that way they'll eventually recognise the letters. You could convey your alphabet with pictures, such as 'a' '= 'apple'; 'b' = 'balloon'; 'c'='cookie', etc., and make cards with pictures of the words beginning with the letter to introduce them to the English alphabet, show them to the kids and get them to repeat the words to you.
The difficulty I've found using the words above is that they all use the phonetic sounds in English, so 'apple' is with an 'ah' sound and so on. When you then get onto 'abcde' = sounds like 'ay'; 'bee'; 'see', 'dee', 'ee', it doesn't quite follow to a young learner. What you can do to get over that is through the course of your class, you can introduce the different sounds that various letter combinations make, so in an example such as 'Hello! What is your name?' most of the sentence is phonetic except maybe 'name' which has a dipthong in the 'a', bearing in mind that the 'a' doesn't start the word from the exercise above. You can teach that over time. It also depends on where your learners are from, maybe they're used to a language not being phonetic.
All the best with it,
Nadine
I agree with the others who suggested starting verbally rather than with reading. In addition to the fact that they're probably just learning to read their native language, it's difficult and frustrating to read, especially a non-phonetic language like English, when you can't understand what you're reading. It's best to start with simple vocabulary, subjects that they can relate to like colors, animals, family, numbers, etc. and language chunks. Use a lot of games and songs which encourage speaking and make words easy to remember. The most important thing at this age is for English learning to be a positive experience so that they will be eager to continue learning and speaking.
I'd recommend an 'hourglass approach'.
Children learn best if they have a 'need' to learn. We can give them a need by using meaningful language first. And the way children learn their first language moves from chunks first to words later, letters much later, and work out many of the sounds themselves throughout the process; so starting with phrases and short sentences is probably the best way.
Start the 'hourglass' with expressions like:
What's'at? Who's'e? Where'd'it'go? What's'yer'name?
Once they're familiar with them break them down into words:
what's that who's he where'd it go what's your name
Throughout this they learn a lot of sounds without you necessarily focusing on them:
/w/ /o/ /t/ /s/ /ae/ /h/ /u:/ /z/ /i:/ /ea/ /d/ /I/ /g/ /ou/ etc...
Then they start learning to build things up by themselves, by combining words:
What's this? What's he? Where'd you go?
Writing should probably come at a slightly later stage, once they can already produce a number of words and expressions. Even then, it is probably best to teach them to recognise words first, then letters, then start practising writing letters, then words... So the 'hourglass' approach again - big pieces, to small pieces, to big pieces.
Thank you very much for all the advice! The ideas you've shared with me are quite sound and similar to what I am thinking now.
I've got a new question. What age is better or what stage is better to teach children to know the phonetic symblols? It's quite hard to do in the English language as there are quite a few basic rules and in all other cases you have to look the words up but at the same time you need to know how the symbols are read to use the transcription.
Thank you.
Dear Heath,
Thank you for your opinion!
What do you think of Excellent Starter books?
They offer children to read texts (of course, they are quite simple) by listening to the discs quite at an early stage.
Is it an effective way to teach young learners? Or do they need to know a bit of phonemes before they start reading?
Thank you.
There are many good phonics programmes like: Jolly Phonics or Nessy begin with the sounds, and songs then go to the reaser series. I used the ones from read write inc., Jolly phonics and Rigby start guide reading. Also good site is Starfalls!
I think at the basic level, after they have learned the alphabet you can start by introducing the letters, then the sounds (phonics) and then the words. So if you have a picture of a ball and the word written on the board or in a book the first letter would be "B", the isolated sound of "B", and then the word "Ball". Then you could say and have them repeat after you "B, B, B" (letter), "B, B, B" (sound), and then "Ball". Kids like the rhythm and sound of this exercise. You can try some esl games and activities for phonics to keep your classes lively.
I think the use of phonics is underrated in the classroom. Many adults learning ESL with an intermediate+ level still have difficulties with certain phonemes. So..... that I have seen and thus I think phonics is of importance.
That's my two cents. Good luck!
Ian