Teach English in Aiyuan Zhen - Suqian Shi

When we are talking about young learners, two groups are related to it.Groups 1 is defined as children whose age from five to nine,group 2 are those age from nine to thirteen.Here,we are looking at group1. Kids at this age are innocent,curious,energetic and lovely. Sometimes you think they are emotional,changeable,noisy and abstracted.They present various change in different situation. Compared with adults,kids have different motivation of learning English.For adults, they know why they should learn English,maybe for career,business,self-growth or promotion etc,basically they are autonomous learners. Kids always learn English because their parents,especial in China,parents want their kids learn more things,including painting,music and English.For most of kids learning English is to make their parents happy. As we learn more about characters and motivation of kids learning English,we know how to teach them effectively. Nowadays,schools in China are more and more adapting picture book reading in class .Here I would like to share teaching vocabulary to group 1 in China with the more popular way -picture book(story) reading lesson. First of all ,choose a appropriate picture story for students.Before we do this,keep in mind what kind of vocabulary we want to teach in the lesson, color, shape ,number,food or clothing etc. We know the objective clearly , we do the job right. Then we choose the story book that match our lesson objective. Many picture books have beautiful illustrations and simple sentences kids like it very much and can be easy to read,but it is not enough. We should also make materials to enrich our lesson, like flashcards,real objects,even visual material or other stuff that can make kids learn easily and actively. After finish preparation for our lesson plan and lesson materials,we go to class. In China ,we usually have 3o or 45 minutes for an English lesson,kids can not concentrate for long time, they will feel bored or distractive. If we want to teach some vocabulary on foods in this class,at beginning of ten minutes,we can encourage children talking about some questions like these :what your favorite food? What your mummy’s favorite food?we elicit them talking about different food,until we get the most of the vocabulary that we want to teach them. Write these objective vocabulary on the board ,show them relevant flashcards or even the real food aids you carry with you,show to kids ,and read loudly these words ,make them building the connection between the objective and the word. Now we can do some practice activities,use activities to strengthen their memory.These games are very welcome for little kids. 1 Looking for flashcards Put flashcards on different place , table,floor,chair ,or corner,everywhere in the classroom .But bear in mind,be aware of kids safety is important when play games.Then you read a word,make kids to find out the card,if someone find out,give he/she a lovely stick decal. 2 Good guess Teacher does action,like the action of eating banana or use a finger draw an apple,let kids guessing what food it is ,then kids may chant out ‘banana’. It is very interesting. 3 You are my ‘friend’ Give everyone a picture,maybe a kind of food ,or maybe an animal,then let them find out who is my ‘friend’. Before start,we should demonstrate how to play. Write each pair friends on the board,like rabbit-carrot,monkey-banana ,someone get the picture of rabbit ,then he/she must find out who get the card of carrot in hand. We also can look for activities or games online that suit for you lesson.For me,teaching young learners are the most enjoyable things for teachers. So these are my thoughts for teaching vocabulary to young learners.