The Necessity of Teaching English as Early as in Kindergarten
Education is essential for each of us. The English language is now a worldwide language, and we can hear this language almost everywhere we go, whether it is an ordinary holiday or some working seminar. , we hear the English language all over the world. Some people start to study it sooner. Some people learn later. But it is essential to begin teaching the English language and not even the English language but another language at the beginning of our lives, so that is the main reason it is important to teach English in kindergarten.
This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Gabriel K. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
Personal Experience:
I have taught English in kindergarten, and I worked in kindergarten for more than two years, so for me, it was a pleasure to work on this certificate and gain some new information because people learn, study, and educate themselves for the rest of our lives and I am not an exception. This certificate has given me a lot of new, valuable information that I can use in my following teaching.
Native-Tongue Challenge
It is not easy to teach young children. Especially in kindergarten, when they barely speak their native language, they have even to say and learn another language when we think about that. We can think about this, and we find out that this can be very difficult for a small kid. But there are ways we can use to practice the English language with them. In many cases, they maybe do not even realize that they learn because we do it in the form of playing, activities, singing. If we think that we have children from two to six years old in kindergarten, we should take it easy and do not have such big expectations. First of all, we should be very friendly and open to them. We really must gain their favor and attention so they will coo-porate with us and be willing to do some activities. But music and singing are a perfect way to do this.
Teaching Approach
We can take the song „Old McDonald had a farm“to teach children new vocabulary in an animal world. But that is not the only thing we can teach them by singing. They can learn the sounds of the animals. If we sing together with the kids, „Old McDonald had a farm, E. I. O., and on that farm, he had a pig, E. I. O., with an oink oink here and oinked there, Here oink there oink...“ we see that if we repeat this, the kids already know the name of the animal which makes this sound and they already know the sound of the animal. And this is only one animal. We can do this with a lot of animals. The kids can even mime some animals, so they even have some physical movement. And the best thing about this is that those kids are having fun in this case, they sing, learn, and probably do not even realize that they do some movements, so they do some activity.
But this is only one way of many. We can use the English language, for example, if we are in a museum with kids and if there are stairs, we can start counting the stairs once we use them. Another simple example is when we are in a city with kids, and we walk to a park, and they see a traffic light. We can use this and explain to them that if they see red color, they should wait. If they see an orange, they can prepare, and when they see a green light, they can go. And we can use these colors to teach them those colors in the English language. And we can do this in much more cases.
Are you ready to teach English abroad or online?
I have a lot of experience with this, and I can confirm that this works. And do not be afraid to make fun of yourself with kids. When we teach kids, in some sense, we should become one of them, play with them, do what they do, and be as visual as possible to them to see us and rely on us. Do not be afraid of this. And always be favorable to the kids. It helps them a lot if we praise them. Do not have big expectations. They are small, but they can learn, and you can be surprised. So to teach them some primary colors, countings from one to ten or some songs and animals. This is a massive thing for them, even if it seems that it is not enough. Because in reality, it is more than enough, and they already speak something. And the best thing is when your small kids grow up, leave a kindergarten and then after a year come to visit you, and they start to speak something in English, that is the best thing that can happen to any teacher because he/she sees that what he/she does has some effect and that it is worth it.
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