Lecture 3.

Psychological, linguistic and instructional bases of teaching

English to young learners.
Young learners are supposed to be children from the first year of formal
schooling (six or seven years old) to eleven or twelve years of age. However, the
age of children is not crucial for how mature they are. According to Phillips “there
are many factors that influence children’s maturity: for example, their culture, their
environment (city or rural), their sex, the expectations of their peers and parents.”
The good teacher should be aware of these differences and that is why the types of
activities he decides to use with a class must be influenced by his knowledge of
their circumstances, attitudes, and interests rather than simply by the children’s
physical age. It is individual how quickly the children develop. There is a
difference between how skilled the children are not depending on their different
ages. Some children develop later than others. In general, it is assumed that five to
seven year old children are all at the same – beginner level. The eight to ten year
olds may also be beginners, or they may have been learning the foreign language
for some time, so there are both level one and level two pupils in the eight to ten
age groups.
Ytreberg mentions some basic characteristics of the young language learners:
• Children sometimes have problems to distinguish the real world from the
imaginary world. It can be difficult for teachers to cope with it and to understand
their perception of reality.
• When working or playing they like to be accompanied with others. Most of
them do not like to work alone.
• They use language skills long before they are aware of them.
• They love to play and the learning itself can be effective only in case they
are enjoying themselves.
• They learn by mimics, using gestures and body movements. The physical
world is very important and dominant at all times.
• They have a very short attention and concentration span.
• They do not always understand the world of adults. The teacher needs to use
the instructions in an appropriate way and use the language and phrases so that the
children can easily get the message.
Young children are motivated when they are praised. It is very important to
support their enthusiasm from the beginning of learning. Phillips assumes that “the
younger the children are, the more holistic learners they will be. Younger learners
respond to language according to what it does or what they can do with it, rather
than treating it as an intellectual game or abstract system. Anyway there are both
advantages and disadvantages: on the one hand they respond to the meaning
underlying the language used and do not worry about individual words or
sentences; on the other, they do not make the analytical links that older learners do.
Younger learners have the advantage of being great mimics, are often
unselfconscious, and are usually prepared to enjoy the activities the teacher has
prepared for them”.
Phillips supposes the years at primary school as “extremely important for
children’s intellectual, physical, emotional and social development. They go
through a series of stages, progressively acquiring skills that are thought necessary
by the society they live in. Many of these skills are interdependent, and if one has
not been sufficiently developed, the acquisition of another may be impeded. On the
physical side, children need to develop balance, spatial awareness and fine control
of certain muscles in order to play sports and perform everyday actions such as
dressing themselves, cleaning their teeth, colouring, drawing and writing. Socially,
children need to develop a series of characteristics to enable them to fit into the
society they live in, to become aware of themselves in relation to others, to share
and co-operate and to be assertive without being aggressive. They need to be able
to accept criticism and become self-critical, to be aware of how they learn and to
experiment with different learning styles, to organise their work and to be open and
interested in all that surrounds them” .
According to Slattery [23: 4] children are learners who
• love to play and use imagination;
• are naturally curious;
• enjoy repetition and routines;
• are developing quickly as individuals;
• learn in a variety of ways, for example, by watching, by listening, by
imitating, by doing things;
• are not able to understand grammatical rules and explanations about
language;
• have quite a short attention span and so need variety of activities;
• talk in their mother tongue about what they understand and do – this helps
them learn;
• can generally imitate the sounds they hear quite accurately and copy the way
adults speak.
According to Brumfit, Moon and Tongue there are characteristics which
most primary level learners share:
• In the first years of schooling it is possible to reach and mould
developmental changes of children and so create their expectations of life.
• Young children want to learn and work with enthusiasm. They do not tend to
have similar inhibitions as their older schoolmates.
• As a group they are potentially more differentiated than secondary or adult
learners, for they are closer to their varied home cultures, and new to the
conformity increasingly imposed across cultural groupings by the school.
• Because they are at the beginning of formal schooling it is essential that their
learning is closely linked with the development of ideas and concepts.
• To make learning enjoyable and motivating it is needed to use physical
movements and activities that stimulate learner’s thinking.
Here are some points according to Phillips to consider when teaching young
learners:
• The activities should be simple enough for children to understand what is
expected of them.
• The tasks should be amusing and within children’s abilities, so that the
learners can easily reach their goals.
• The task should be stimulating and motivating for learners to feel satisfied
with their work.
• Written activities should be used only in a small amount. In the sixth or
seventh year of age the children are not yet so good at writing in their native
language.
• Mostly the speaking activities should prevail – indeed, with very young
children listening activities will take up a large proportion of class time.
• The activities should be simple enough for the children so that they
understand what to do and what is expected of them.
Nowadays learners are “overloaded” by the amount of information and
experiences. For teachers of young children it is sometimes very difficult to keep
their concentration. It can be disrupted by many factors. In general one can see that
the child cannot concentrate on one particular thing, topic or activity more than
few minutes. The teacher is supposed to interchange the activities to keep
children’s interest. It is good to divide the lesson into shorter activities, because
young children like the moment of surprise and they do not know what comes
next. Teachers should keep the number of new language items introduced to a
reasonable level and should present and practise new language themes in a number
of different ways.
As children grow and mature they bring more intellectual, motor, and social
skills to the classroom, as well as a wider knowledge of the world. The focus
should continue to be on language as a vehicle of communication and not on the
grammar, though the ability of older children to make logical links and deductions
can be exploited. The teacher can provide such tasks for them in which they can
discover simple grammatical rules; their attention can be focused on the structure
of the language in order to help them formulate an ‘internal grammar’ of their own.
The kinds of activities that work well are games and songs with actions, total
physical response activities, tasks that involve colouring, cutting and sticking,
simple, repetitive stories, and simple, repetitive speaking activities that have an
obvious communicative value.

Who are young learners?

As one year of age makes a huge difference among children, the
generalizations made for young learners may need more detailed analysis and
some sub categorization.
Very Young Learners Young Learners Older/ Late Young
Learners
Age: 3-6 years old Age: 7-9 years old Age: 10-12 years old

Grade: Pre-school Grade: 1st– 3rd grade Grade: 4th- 6thgrade

Education
Language Focus/ Skills Language Focus/ Skills Language Focus/ Skills
Used: Used: Used:
Listening & Speaking Listening & Speaking Listening/Speaking/
Vocabulary Items Vocabulary Items Reading/Writing
(concrete & familiar (concrete & familiar and Vocabulary Items
objects) new objects) (concrete & abstract)
No Grammar Teaching or New in Reading and Grammar (inductive)
metalanguage (can’t Writing (word to
analyze language but may sentence level)
be exposed to chunks No Grammar Teaching or
through songs, classroom metalanguage (chunks
language) through songs and
No reading & writing classroom language)
(may recognize letters or
short words)
Characteristics: Characteristics: Characteristics:
*Low concentration span *Low concentration *Longer attention span
but easily excited span: Wide variety of but still children
*High motivation; active activities *Taking learning seriously
involvement needed *World knowledge
*Love talking but *Short memory: frequent *More cooperation in
problems in sharing revision is needed groups and in
*Short memory: Learn *Logical-analytical: pairs
slowly Forget easily Asking questions *Developed social, motor
*Repetition and revision is *Problems in sharing in and
necessary group work intellectual skills
*Limited motor skills * Developing confidence *Learning strategies are
(using a pen and scissors) in expressing themselves used and
but kinesthetic and * Developing world developing
energetic knowledge
*Learn holistically *Limited motor skills
*Love stories, fantasy, (left-right)
imagination, art, drawing *Reasonable amount of
and coloring input
*Love stories, fantasy,
imagination, drawing &
coloring
Adapted from: Ersöz, A. (2007). Teaching English to young learners. Ankara:
EDM Publ.

As the concept “teaching English to young learners” suggests, age plays a

crucial role in what we teach and how we teach it, since a young learner class is
different from an adult and/or a teenager class in terms of the learners’ language
learning needs, the language competences emphasized, and the cognitive skills
addressed. That’s why, it is highly important to show the differences of these
three learner groups keeping in mind the fact that every learner is unique and
such lists can only reflect generalizations (Harmer, 2007):
Young Children Adolescents Adults
- They respond although - Despite their success in They can engage with
they do not understand. language abstract thought
- They learn from learning, they are seen - They have a whole
everything around them: like range of (positive or
they learn indirectly problematic students. negative) life and learning
rather than directly. - They commit experiences.
- They understand mostly passionately when - They have expectations
when they see, hear, touch they are engaged about the learning
and interact rather than - Most of them start to process and they have
from explanations. understand their own patterns of
- Abstract concepts are the need for learning. learning
difficult to deal with. - Attention span is longer - They are more
- They generally display as a result disciplined than the other
a curiosity about the of intellectual age
world and an enthusiasm development. groups and know how to
for learning a language - They can talk about struggle on despite
- They like talking about abstract issues boredom
themselves and respond to a certain point. - Unlike other groups,
to learning that uses their - They can use many they know why they are
lives as the main topic. different ways learning and what they
- They love discovering of studying and practicing want to have at the end.
things, making or drawing language. - They sustain a level of
things, using their - They search for identity motivation even for a
imagination, moving from and selfesteem; thus they distant goal, which is
one place to another, need to feel difficult for the other
solving puzzles. good about themselves groups.
- They have a short and valued. - They can be critical of
attention span; they can - They need teacher and teaching methods or they
easily get bored after 5-10 peer may feel uncomfortable
 minutes. approval and are sensitive with unfamiliar
- Teachers should have a to methods.
rich repertoire of criticism of their own age - Older ones worry that
activities to help young group. their intellectual powers
children receive - Teachers should link diminish by age.
information from a teaching to - They have a longer
variety of sources and their everyday interests concentration span to
plan a range of activities and continue an activity than
for a given time period. experiences. the other groups.
- Teachers should work - Teachers should
with students individually consider their (positive or
or in groups negative) learning
- Teachers need to be experiences.
aware of the students’
interests to motivate them.
- The classroom should
be colorful and bright
with enough room for
different activities.
Adapted from: Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English language teaching (4
Th Ed.). Essex: Pearson Longman.
Learn the lecture text and answer the following questions.
1. Who are young learners?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of young language learners? (Phillips’
point of view)
3. What is the fifth character of the young language learners according to Ytreberg?
4. What kind of learners are children? (According to Slattery)
5. What factors influence on children’s maturity? (According to Phillips)
6. Write 3 differences between young children and adolescents and 3 differences
between children and adults.