Teach English in XintAnyanchang - Yancheng Shi

While getting into a teaching career a person can basically choose what groups of people he / she is going to teach and if that person chose to do a kindergarten EFL teaching that can indeed be a challenging task to accomplish. Working with young learners usually aged 3 to 6 can become an exciting and catching process but it also can present a number of difficulties especially for inexperienced teachers. Nowadays a lot of parents in different countries want their children to be able to speak English so teaching kindergarten has become extremely popular. However we can clearly see that the younger generation doesn’t choose to study English but their parents choose for them as they are too young to make their own decisions. That is a reason why a teacher is responsible for motivating the students and sometimes even showing and explaining to them why they might need to speak English in the first place. Generally speaking, the first and the best motivation the younger students might have is to have fun in the classroom so if a teacher is able to make the lessons lively and fun he / she has more chances to conquer the hearts of the students and enjoy teaching kindergarten on a daily basis. To motivate students even more it is really important to have a classroom that is decorated in a way that engages students and makes them want to come and learn more English. If a teacher managed to make a proper set of classroom decorations they themselves can become a source of knowledge for the learners and can help to reinforce the material that was presented during a lesson. Things like colourful posters, weather forecast clipboards, calendars and many more can be used to engage the students in the process of leaning English as well as to arise a high level of their interest. As the younger students tend to have shorter attentions spans in comparison with the older ones it is vital for a teacher to vary activities and tasks in the classroom to make lessons more effective. Playing games is the right way to organise most of the activities to let the children absorb the language in a natural and spontaneous manner. While being around the kids especially if they are of the same nationality it is of great importance to speak English at all times even if the teacher is able to speak the kids’ first language. This way a live language environment is created to stimulate students’ performance in listening and speaking. At first the students might not be able to understand anything that the teacher says but acquiring more vocabulary and spending more time in an English classroom they become more familiar with every day phrases and little by little start to express themselves. Having music in the classroom can be extremely beneficial for establishing a nice engaging atmosphere and for raising the spirit and enthusiasm among the young learners. Moreover teaching the kids a song after they have obtained some vocabulary knowledge can have a really positive effect as the children are likely to remember the lyrics of the song and this can reinforce the vocabulary lesson. Apart from speaking and being able to understand the spoken speech it is vital for a kindergarten teacher to allocate time for developing students’ reading and writing skills. Writing for the very young students can begin with colouring letters or doing some craft work that would introduce the alphabet to the kids and afterwords printable worksheets can be of great help in obtaining initial writing skills. In senior groups the kids can make word study notebooks to write in the words they have learnt and with time it is possible to proceed to writing expressions and simple sentences. This way the learners not only practice their writing skills but it is also beneficials for developing reading skills. Phonics is a great method to teach both writing and reading skills and one of the good ways to keep the students busy and entertained while learning how to read is to have a set of phonics books that a teacher can use during lessons and while organising some reading time where the children can choose a book they like as well as exchanging books among themselves. Poems, rhymes, tongue twisters can be of great use to let the kids dive into the English language. Sometimes making crafts can become a part of a lesson in case they are relevant to the topic and can carry some meaning as to what the students gain by making this craft. With the little ones lessons can be organised in different ways. Seating everyone in semicircle and facing the kids to the board is good if a teacher wants to draw something, place pictures or flashcards on the board or even tell a story. Sometimes it is good to have the students seated on a carpet and read a book for them using a lot of gesture and mime to keep them entertained and focused. Whatever the activity is about the result in students’ performance will mostly likely depend on the teacher so to succeed as a kindergarten teacher one should be vibrant and alive and the kids will respond. And we need to keep in mind that the younger the students are the faster and easier they absorb information so every little thing we do in the classroom for the purpose of teaching the language count and can bring incredible results.