Page 20 - ELG2107 Jul Issue 476

FEATURE .

Kids can make the best teachers

Learning to teach English to adults is one thing, but a class of six-year-olds

is quite another, says Melanie Butler

ost private sector EFL teachers for first-time Teflers and, as you can see on the
have been there – at least, those opposite page, they took them from their new
of us who were trained in the book on teaching pre-schoolers. It’s all about PHOTO BY SHUTTERSTOCK
MBritish tradition – we spend four classroom management and if you can manage
weeks on a certificate course training to teach a group of three-year-olds, a group of 30-year-
a language to adults, practising with adult olds will be a breeze.
learners, writing essays about adult learners. Many new teachers, especially native
Then we get on a plane headed to Granada, English speakers, worry most about how they’ll
or Guangxhou or Greece, and the first class we teach the technical content (what’s a modal
teach are six-year-olds or, particularly in East verb again?), but perhaps the most important
Asia where pre-school English is all the rage, thing is how to get the learners to learn.
even younger. In Japan, for example, English This is most self-evident with younger It is, as Verdoukas and Dooley point out,
for newborns is reportedly all the rage. learners. Babies up to the age of six months all about exposure. The genius for recognising
Now, if you happen to have taken one of can discriminate every human speech sound, sound patterns may fade, but the importance
the new-look US four-week courses, such as regardless of language, recognise it and imitate of motivation does not. Small children do not
those run by Bridge or designed by the TESOL it. Although that natural gift begins to fade tend to suffer from language learning anxiety –
association, you may well have chosen to over time, research by Professor Patricia Kuhl a well-established psychological phenomenon.
specialise in younger learners for the last two shows that it can be rekindled up to at least the The ways we deal with children, using gentle
weeks rather than adults. age of six – as long as children are motivated humour, avoiding belittling, creating a
But, whatever you have learned, facing a by their teacher. And if you don’t believe me, I safe environment, can be equally important
rowdy group of six year olds – or even 16-year- recommend Professor Kuhl’s spectacular TED for adults.
olds – for the first time can be a daunting Talk The linguistic genius of babies (https://www. And how do we acheive all this in the
experience, so we asked Myrsini Verdoukas ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_ classroom? By following top tip number one:
and Jenny Dooley to give us their top 10 tips genius_of_babies?language=en). be prepared.

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20 July 2021