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Teaching young learners can be more tiring than teaching other age groups, but extremely rewarding. In order to successfully teach young learners teachers need a variety of attributes and skills which will be discussed in more depth below. Children are bundles of energy, but have short attention spans which causes them to be easily side-tracked or easily bored. In order to successfully teach young learners, a teacher absolutely has to keep the lesson engaging and ever changing. For example, the Engage phase of an ESA lesson for young learners would contain a short competitive activity where the children can guess the type of animal the teacher is pretending to be. This sort of activity will appeal to younger learners by enticing their competitive natures and presenting them with a fun situation where the teacher is acting silly in a productive way. The study phase would consist of fun and amusing songs that the children would have to learn and repeat chorally in order to properly practice the pronunciation of a topic like animals. Activities that require high levels of engagement are essential for younger learners in order to prevent them from becoming bored. Keeping small worksheet games, such as word searches, are perfect for entertaining stronger students who finish activities faster, thus preventing them from having too much down time to become bored with. On top of a high level of engagement, younger learners will also flourish with large amounts of praise for good behavior and correct answers, therefore overwhelming encouragement from teachers is essential. Stickers are a wonderful way to help encourage young children on their physical coursework; not only will children try harder in order to earn the achievement of a sticker, but every sticker can contain an encouraging phrase or picture. Small rewards like this will help to keep the students motivated and will create a comfortable atmosphere for them to continue practicing their English abilities. Incentives for completing physical homework, like encouraging stickers, can help ensure that students take the time to do homework outside of the classroom. On the topic of the classroom environment, it is important to establish ways to aid more shy and reserved students so that they are able to also practice and improve. Shyer younger children greatly benefit from the teacher lowering themselves to the students’ level due to the fact that it presents the teacher in a less intimidating manner. Shyer children could also benefit from small group or paired work due to the fact that the two put less pressure on the child. Learning and practicing a new language is naturally a more anxiety-inducing activity, so creating a comfortable environment where a young learner is able to feel welcome is important. A teacher can also help improve the environment by participating in ice-breaker or “warmer” games at the beginning of the semester. By participating in games that involve each member to reveal something about themselves, students will not only feel closer to one and other, but also with the teacher. Skills and techniques, such as those listed above, are crucial components to successfully teaching young learners.
