3rd Week

Working with Young Language Learners

What is the very first thing that comes into your mind when you are asked to work with young language learners?

i) Troublesome? Irritating? Annoying?

ii) Fun? Interesting? Cool?

Well, we, as the adults won't understand the world of children. However, we must bear in mind that working with children is fun. Young children do not come to the language classroom empty-handed. They bring with them curiosity, instincts and other characteristics which will help them to learn new knowledge.

This week, we were assigned to work in group of 6 and each of the group was given 1 subtopic to read and present. "Children's ability to grasp meaning" was the topic given to us. This topic is about how the children understand what the adults say although they do not know the meaning of each words in the sentence.

How do children understand us?

Intonation, gesture, facial expressions, actions and circumstances can help the children to understand the unknown words, phrases and sentence. For example, you said, "It's dangerous! Don't!" by saying it in a deep tone. Young children may not understand the word 'dangerous' but through your facial expression and gesture, he knows that he should not go near to that place. They might not know why but they know they should listen to you because there might be something there.

In learning a new language, children will apply the same method to interpret new words and new sentence structures. As language teachers, we should be the actors which are able to demonstrate good gesture, intonation and facial expression during teaching and learning session. For example, children can learn language through story telling. While telling story, teacher can show picture cards to the pupils when he/she is expressing something. This can help the children to understand better of the story they are listening to.