TEACHING ENGLISH TO CHILDREN, YOUNG AND ADULT LEARNERS
Lecture 1
VICKY PAPAGEORGIOU
BA, PGCE IN TEL, MED.
In this lecture, we will :
1.
Present what the focus of this course will be about and how you will be assessed
2.
Discuss about the meaning of culture
3.
Discuss about intercultural awareness and its significance
4.
Discuss about what Intercultural Communication Competency means
5.
Mention the tools that can help us gain intercultural communication competency
6.
Characteristics of young learners
Aims of module
The purpose of this module is to familiarize students with English language teaching regarding different age
groups. More precisely, students can be taught specific methodologies and strategies for teaching children
(3-12), young learners (12-18) and adults (over 18). Thus, students can learn about diversifying their
teaching according to the age group of the learners and incorporate play, interactive and communication
strategies, etc. along with different classroom management techniques, lesson plans, assessment
strategies, etc. Finally, the module can include issues concerning online teaching, specific purpose English
language teaching (i.e., Business English, Academic English), teaching on a one-to-one basis, diverse
educational settings (i.e., pre-school, primary and secondary educational settings, etc).
Learning Outcomes – what you will gain
from taking the module:
By the end of this module students should be able to:
1. Demonstrate knowledge of major methods and issues in teaching English to children.
2. Describe culturally and age-appropriate methods for teaching English to young learners.
3. Understand primary methods for teaching English to adults, including teaching English for specific
purposes.
Indicative Module Content
In this module, students will become familiar with

English as a second language; inter-cultural awareness

Teaching toddlers and pre-school children: nursery rhymes and songs, riddles and proverbs, mystery boxes,
puppets, finger plays, motivation, behaviour management, early literacy skills, listening and speaking games,
storytelling, teams

School-aged children: different textbooks, lesson planning (class framework and organization, management
and mediation, classroom language), games, verbal play, songs, chants, tongue twisters, picture books, holistic
activities, promoting communication, cultural activities, drilling, roleplay, affective and movement activities

Online teaching: motivation, student engagement, content and activities, online games, mobile assisted
learning (e-books, story-telling, activities), online platforms (i.e., Zoom, Webex, Skype, MSTeams, etc.), virtual
classroom, assessment, security and privacy issues

Academic English: written academic discourse, writing tasks and written academic genres, language features of
academic writing, lexis and grammar, phrase and sentence structure, discourse flow, cohesion and coherence,
subordinate clauses; inter-cultular variation

Teaching adult learners: vocabulary, grammar, literacy skills, learners with limited literacy skills, task-based
design, commitment, motivation, engagement, instruction, assessment, performance indicators, conversation
method, lesson outline and planning, social and cultural context, psycholinguistic factors, stress and anxiety

Teaching Business English

Teaching methods and strategies

Classroom management according to age group

Private tutoring and teaching on a one-to-one basis or small-group teaching

Teaching English at preschool, primary, secondary and tertiary educational settings.
Think (or look up for) ways of greeting
people around the world
How can this affect us?
How can this affect teaching? What are the implications?
Watch the video and answer the
questions
What did Waipapa reply to the greeting of one
the staff members? How was this received?
How integral is culture in language?
Why is training on interculturality needed?
What about the role of teachers’ proficiency and
interculturality?
Are native speakers inherently better teachers?
Simply put : if a teacher is linguistically proficient
or is aware of teaching practices, is it enough?
Is speaking the language properly just enough?
Why do teachers have to be empathetic?
What does interculturality mean?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgg4uD6ErX
8
What is needed?
Is filling students with the requisite grammar and vocabulary enough when teaching a
language?
Is polishing their pronunciation and honing their communicative skills helping them to
achieve the wider goal of communicating?
Intercultural awareness is equally important
Watch the video and answer the
questions
What is intercultural learning?
What do we understand by the word
'culture’?
What is ‘deep culture’ vs ‘surface culture’?
Note down as much information as
possible about how to teach about both
aspects of culture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1pSouF
wNhM
A way of life.
A set of social practices.
A system of beliefs.
A shared history or set of experiences.
A culture may be synonymous with a religion, though followers of Christianity or Judaism or Islam may also
come from different cultures.
It is highly possible to belong to or identify oneself with more than one culture.
Intercultural awareness
Cross-cultural awareness in communication
migration of people
Cross-cultural awareness in communication
a result of economic globalization and mass
a backlash to the crisis of multiculturalism.
Cultural critic Edward Hall (1959) termed intercultural communication as a new discipline in human
sciences which became a part of the Communication Studies in the mid-70s.
Communication now with people of different cultures across the borders
Successful communication largely depends on the cross-cultural awareness and
intercultural competence.
Communicative Competence “involves the knowledge, motivation and skills to interact effectively and
appropriately with members of different cultures” (Barnett & Lee 2002, p. 208).
Three key challenges for teachers
When we English teachers move to a different country, we have to take into consideration three key
challenges:
● culture shock when interacting out and about with locals
● the difficulties in understanding and reading the culture of the students inside the classroom
● your local language knowledge may be lacking and you’ll use a very different non-verbal communication
style to your learners.
Example :
several Asian cultures teach young students to look down and to never stare directly into the eyes of the
teacher. Parents also teach children not to address the teacher directly. In situations like this, the teaching
style will need to be adjusted and re-assessed.
What is Intercultural Communication
Competency?
Intercultural Competence is "the ability to develop specific knowledge, skills and attitudes that lead to
visible behaviour and communication that are both effective and appropriate in intercultural interactions".
(Deardorff, 2009).
EFL teachers can be very competent in linguistic communication, however, they may not be aware of the
intercultural dimension of the language. This impacts on the performance of communication and
interaction.
Intercultural communication reflects a greater significance of the inseparability of language and culture and
the need to prepare students for effective intercultural communication in order to succeed in a global work
environment (Kirvalidze, 2017).
When teaching English as a lingua franca, it's essential to integrate and enhance cross-cultural understanding within the
curriculum. This ensures that students are fully engaged in developing effective skills for communicating across cultures,
as “simple mastery of the linguistic forms of a language is not enough for learners to be considered competent in the
target language” (Krasner, 1999, p. 79).
Preparing students for effective and competent intercultural communication through cross-cultural awareness involves
and also necessitates a deep understanding of cultural knowledge and awareness.
Communication without appropriate cultural context can often lead to awkward or amusing situations, causing
misunderstandings (Kirvalidze, 2008, p. 85)
Let’s go back to the video
Watch the video and keep notes on :
Teaching ideas about teaching students about
both surface and deep culture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1pSouF
wNhM
So what tools can help us gain intercultural
competency?
Provide learners a chance to reflect on their own multi-cultural identities. Think together about how
humans construct identities and renegotiate them according to different contexts (i.e. how may we use
dialect when with family members and less colloquialisms with a professor at university).
To do so, we can introduce specific tasks into our teaching routines that help learners develop cultural
awareness components. To give you some ideas, they may be:
● Role play or simulations
● Present what they think distinguishes their own culture from others
● Present their own city/country to their fellow students through making use of different skills such as
writing, speaking, presentations, mingles or games
● Discuss gestures in class that have different meanings in different cultures.
Let’s read the seminar discussion article
and summarise it in groups
Teaching young learners
"Free the child's potential, and you will transform
him into the world.“ Maria Montessori
Why would teaching to young learners
be challenging?
1. The characteristics of L1
2. The characteristics of the specific age group in discussion
What do you know about teaching
young learners?
Since a child’s ability to communicate orally in his/her first language takes place before learning how to read and write, an effective EFL
program for young learners should go through the natural stages of learning a language….
Emergent Literacy: the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that a child develops in relation to reading and writing throughout the early
childhood period, starting at birth and before the onset of conventional reading and writing instruction (usually at school entry).
Print Motivation : Being interested in and enjoying books.
Vocabulary : Knowing the names of things.
Print Awareness : Noticing print, knowing how to handle a book, and knowing how to follow words on a page.
Narrative Skills : Being able to describe things and events and to tell stories.
Letter Knowledge : Understanding letters are different from each other, knowing their names and sounds, and recognizing letters
everywhere.
Phonological Awareness : Being able to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words.
Basic oral/aural development
Emergent literacy skills
Reading & writing
(Cameron, 2001)
Characteristics of Young Learners
1. What ways are 5-8 year olds the same as 9-10 year olds?
2. How are they different?
In general 5-8 and 9-10 year olds are quite different.
However, both 5-8 and 9-10 year olds prefer to learn new information in a context that is
connected with their lives.
VS
Group Activity 1
Imagine you are teaching a class of :
1.
five-year-olds
2.
eight-year-olds
3.
ten-year-olds
With your designated group describe your students in these areas:
emotional development
social development
physical development
thinking development
Now compare your answers with those from the chart
Characteristics of young learners
Ways of learning :
Age 5-8
Age 9-10
Prefers to learn by touching or holding things or
moving (kinesthetic)
Learners begin to develop the ability to learn by
seeing or listening
(Pinter, 2006)
Reasons for learning
AGE 5-8
AGE 9-10
Enjoys new experiences
Is motivated to learn things that are
interesting to them
Begins to be interested in specific themes or
topics
Likes fun and adventure
Likes to memorize and learn new information
Wants to understand why things happen
Likes praise and have attention of adults
Wants to please adults
(Pinter, 2006)
Physical development
AGE 5-8
AGE 9-10
Has lots of energy and is very active
(kinesthetic).
Can do precise tasks and has developed the
ability to do physical activities like sports or
game.
Is developing but may have difficulty with
tasks like writing.
(Pinter, 2006)
Emotional development
AGE 5-8
AGE 9-10
Feeling change frequently.
Is independent and likes to do things for
himself/herself .
Has difficulty controlling his/her behavior
(egocentric)
love praise and reward.
are less shy than older learners
(Pinter, 2006)
Will do things without being asked.
Social development
AGE 5-8
AGE 9-10
Thinks more about himself/herself than others.
Begins to think about and understand relationships
with others.
Likes to work in groups but needs supervision.
May have difficulty expressing or understanding
feelings
(Pinter, 2006)
Likes to work with other learners.
Thinking ability
AGE 5-8
AGE 9-10
Has difficulty understanding consequences.
Can understand the main idea but has difficulty
identifying steps or details.
Can classify things using simple characteristics.
Has difficulty planning ahead.
Knows strategies that can be used to solve
problems or learn (for example, asking for help,
taking notes).
Study skills : Somewhat passive. May not look for
opportunities to learn.
Understands cause and effects.
Can identify similarities and differences.
Study skills : Active learners; want to know
more about the world
(Pinter, 2006)
Attention span
AGE 5-8
AGE 9-10
10-15 minutes
20-30 minutes
(Pinter, 2006)
More characteristics
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
enjoy learning through playing, acting, making and doing.
are imaginative.
understand language as units not separate words.
interpret meaning without necessarily understanding the individual word.
learn indirectly rather than directly.
Reasons for teaching young learners
An earlier start to EFL could lead to achieving proficiency in the language.
It also facilitates acquiring a native-like pronunciation,
enhances overall academic performance, and
fosters superior problem-solving abilities.
Additionally,…….
it enriches one's understanding of their native language,
cultivates lifelong communication skills with a wider audience,
promotes a deeper appreciation of diverse cultures,
and offers a competitive edge in the job market by expanding employment prospects.
(Cameron, 2001)
Priority areas in TEYL
(Cameron, 2001)
Younger children
more focus on speaking and listening
Older children
more focus on reading and writing
(Cameron, 2001)
Listening skills
Language learning should begin with listening.
This is the first skill children practice in L1, so it is natural to begin with listening especially with
very young learners.
AGE 5-8: teacher talk, songs, rhymes, stories.
AGE 9-10 : the above and listening comprehension activities to develop strategies.
(Cameron, 2001)
Importance of listening
1.
Valuable data source for understanding language mechanics.
2.
Secure environment for hesitant learners to refrain from verbal communication.
3.
Abundant resource for language structures to practice or mimic.
4.
Opportunities for non-verbal reinforcement (e.g., visual aids) crucial for non-readers.
5.
Platform to concentrate on language comprehension and showcase comprehension.
Rules for Speaking skills
While oral language production is a productive skill, children might not feel prepared to speak, so it's
crucial for teachers and parents to exhibit patience.
Speaking starts with practicing drills, set phrases (junks and formulaic expressions), repeating models,
so it is important to use such activities to make them familiar with repetitive language.
To enhance their skills, children require exposure to various types of discourse, necessitating diverse
tasks within the classroom setting.
Teachers should consider both the developmental stages of the native language (L1) and the target
language (L2), as well as the age of the students, when designing speaking activities.
Constantly correcting every mistake can be disheartening, and children require support in attaining
fluency. Prior to speaking tasks, it's beneficial to teach them the necessary language structures and
vocabulary to prepare them adequately.
Designing authentic activities, such as role-plays and dialogues based on real life conversations, motivates
the students, so they willingly take the role of an imaginary person. However, the meaning and purpose of
discourse needs to be made comprehensible to the learners.
The teachers should be aware of the problems young learners may have while articulating phonemes. It is
important not to ignore the pronunciation, intonation and stress: Using tongue twisters, mirrors, imitating
native speakers in movies can be some of the useful activities.
When the class is noisy in a speaking activity, trying to shout over children is not a good idea: Using the
lights, symbols or music may help.
(Cameron, 2001; Linse, 2005)
Principles and strategies in developing
speaking skills
Focus on meaning
"What are they saying to me?"
"Why are they saying that to me?"
"Clear and correct pronunciation“
Vocabulary
Dialogues
A: Here you're.
B: Thank you.
A: You're welcome
Principles and strategies in developing
speaking skills : Repetition through….
Songs:
Word Games:
Ten green bottles hanging on
the wall”
Bingo.
Rhymes:
Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday – Hop!
Thursday Friday Saturday –
Shop!
Sunday – take a rest and –
Flop!
I went to market and bought an
apple.
Stories:
traditional stories,
Fables.
Key factor : Motivation
In the YLs’ classroom motivation can be triggered by:
taking under consideration their age and their level of language competence in L1 and L2.
adopting activities that are within their interests.
designing meaningful tasks.
integrating fun, play and imagination in your teaching program.
being prepared to act.
keeping the affective filter low .
Teachers as caregivers:
1.Use English exclusively during class sessions.
2.Engage children by asking questions to maintain their focus.
3.Respond positively to children's contributions, regardless of whether their words are
incomplete or not perfectly articulated.
4.Reinforce previously stated phrases.
5.Enhance or expand upon children's verbal expressions.
6.Assist very young learners in comprehending instructions and tasks by employing their native
language (L1).
7.Address errors in a subtle manner.
References
Barnett, G. A., & Lee, M. (2002). Issues in intercultural communication. Gudykunst, M. and Mody, B. (Eds). Sage.
Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching languages to young learners. Cambridge University Press.
Deardorff, D. K. (2009). The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence. SAGE.
Hall, E. T. (1959). The silent language. Anchor Books: Doubleday.
Kirvalidze, N. (2017). Linguo-cultural and pragmatic peculiarities of the phenomenon of anglicisation in Georgia. Journal
Krasner, I. (1999). The role of culture in language teaching. Dialogue on Language Instruction, 13(1-2), 79-88.
Linse, T.C. (2005). Practical English language teaching : Young learners. Mc Graw Hill.
Pinter, A. (2006). Teaching young language learners. Oxford University Press.