Нова українська школа: методика навчання англійської мови в 1-2 класах закладів заглобальної середньої освіти на засадах компетентнісного підходу - Карпюк О. Д. 2020

Introduction

Who is this book for?

The shelves of the staffroom may be full of published resource books and they may have access to folders of materials created by colleagues. Internet search engines provide links to thousands of websites offering instant lesson plans and ideas. The sheer amount of available material can be overwhelming, and finding a tip can be time-consuming. The aim of this book is to bring a collection of resources together in one place for faster reference.

This book is for teachers working with six- to seven- year-olds who are learning English as a foreign language. The book is also for those studying to become teachers of very young learners who are looking for ideas and activities to engage their future pupils in meaningful and imaginative ways. If you have previously taught English to older learners, you might like to develop your understanding of very young learners and find out about some of the important principles behind teaching this age group.

The educational needs of these learners are different from those of older children, and our aim is to encourage teachers to reflect on these needs and understand more fully the role they play when educating the whole child. We feel that providing quality language tuition is about creating naturally meaningful experiences that encourage very young children to view themselves positively and become enthusiastic about learning the new language.

We hope that in this book you can find teaching ideas, activities, some helpful tips and supplementary resources.

Getting started

The more we learn about neuroscience, the clearer it becomes that the human brain now develops much sooner than we had believed. Early stimulation can be highly effective. The spread of technology means many more young children can be exposed to English at an earlier age.

Children have a less complicated view of the world than older children and adults, but this fact does not imply that teaching children is simple or straightforward. On the contrary, the teacher of children needs to be highly skilled to reach into children’s worlds and lead them to develop their understandings towards more formal, more extensive and differently organised concepts. Primary teachers need to understand how children make sense of the world and how they learn; they need skills of analysing learning tasks and of using language to teach new ideas to groups and classes of children.

Teaching a foreign language to children needs all the skills of the good primary teacher in managing children and keeping them on task, plus knowledge of the language, of language teaching, and of language learning. Primary English teachers need to have adequate proficiency in the language to provide comprehensible input and natural exposure to the target language.

«The central characteristics of foreign language learning lie in the amount and type of exposure to the language: there will be very little experience of the language outside the classroom, and encounters with the language will be through several hours of teaching in a school week» (Cameron, 2001: 11). In the case of a global language like English, however, even very young children will encounter the language in use on video, TV, computers and film. What they might not be exposed to is ’street’ use, i.e. people using the language for everyday life purposes all around them, as might happen in a second language immersion context such as learning French or English in Canada, or an additional language context. In foreign language teaching, there is an onus on the teacher to provide exposure to the language and to provide opportunities for learning through classroom activities.

The world we live in is changing rapidly. Our children are growing up in a time of globalisation in which our world is growing increasingly interconnected every day. The twenty-first century requires a new set of skills to keep up with our fast-paced, technology-driven world.

Today, learning has become a lifelong process. Given the rapidly changing nature of our world, people of all ages must constantly learn and relearn what they need to know. What they learned yesterday may no longer be valid in tomorrow’s world. One of the twenty-first-century skill that has been identified by many countries as imperative for their young learners is proficiency in English. When teaching English as an international language, it is important to contextualise language instruction and incorporate real-life situations into the classroom that are relevant to children. This is impossible without addressing various twenty-first century skills which are necessary for life in our modern world.

In 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times, Trilling and Fadel (2009) created a list referred to as the «7Cs Skills» (p. 176):

✵ Critical thinking and problem-solving

✵ Creativity and innovation

✵ Collaboration, teamwork, and leadership

✵ Cross-cultural understanding

✵ Communications, information, and media literacy

✵ Computing and ICT literacy

✵ Career and learning self-reliance

It is important that opportunities are created in the classroom for children to be exposed to natural language and to interact with each other. In order to create these ideal conditions for learning, teachers need to be equipped with methodological skills and knowledge and to be competent in English. Teachers’ confidence and willingness to use the language naturally in the classroom are key components of success.

Learning to learn is also one of the most important objectives for all learning and teaching contexts for all ages. In our fast moving world, it is simply impossible for learners to acquire all the knowledge and skills they need while they are at school. It is the school’s responsibility to teach learners how to learn, i.e. to equip them with strategies that they can use outside school. This process needs to start as early as possible, preferably at the beginning of schooling. Rapid developments in information technology have meant that independent learning opportunities are becoming available all the time through the internet.

Learning to learn is also closely related to the so-called ’21 st-century skills’ mentioned above. Various aspects of learning to learn can be introduced into the day-to-day practice of any language classroom without changing many of the usual classroom practices.

In Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills, Binkley et al. (2012), also outlined the high-priority twenty-first-century skills, which are similar to «70s Skills» but conceptualised in a different way, breaking down the skills into four categories: ways of thinking, ways of working, tools for working and living in the world.

Ways of Thinking

1 Creativity and innovation

2 Critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making

3 Learning to learn, metacognition

Ways of Working

4 Communication

5 Collaboration (teamwork)

Tools for Working

6 Information literacy

7 ICT literacy

Living in the World

8 Citizenship — local and global

9 Life and career

10 Personal and social responsibility — including cultural awareness and competence

These ten high-priority skills are organised in a way that can be helpful for teachers when integrating twenty-first-century skills into their curriculum.

To enable children to learn English a teacher should remember that his/ her learners need quality, planned English input (and repetition of this input) if they are to pick up English to their full potential. This potential is often underestimated in comparison to that of children who learn languages outside the classroom effectively, rarely making mistakes. A child does not find learning language difficult like an adult.

Throughout the language learning process, the ’feel-good’ factor is vital for motivation and new learning. Children live in the present and their wellbeing can change from lesson to lesson. Teachers need to tune in to their emotional state at the beginning of each lesson and adapt to it. Sometimes, if children are moving into a new developmental stage, teachers need to adapt quickly to satisfy their eager curiosity to absorb new information and ideas.

Holistic learning for young children of 6 to 7 is innate, rapid and continuous following recognisable, common developmental patterns.

A child of this age is an unconscious self-educator and likes to be treated with patience and understanding.