Teaching English to Young Learners

Whether you enjoy working with children or not, it is likely that you'll find yourself teaching this age group at some point in your TEFL career.

They can be difficult and challenging but they can also be the most enthusiastic and rewarding students you'll ever have the pleasure of teaching.

Here are some main pointers:
Keep lessons fun, lively and simple. It is a good idea to use a project based approach so one theme is revisited over a series of lessons. By teaching this way, the vocabulary is reinforced and repeated but still remains interesting.

If you're teaching very young children, variety is of utmost importance. Lots of short, simple activities are best suited to their attention span. Learning aims should be kept basic and you should try to incorporate plenty of child-friendly practice tasks that allow them to practise the target language repeatedly.

When getting your students to practise their English, try to incorporate things that young children enjoy doing generally. Things such as singing, playing games and colouring in etc. Just remember to be creative and more importantly, allow the children to be creative. Using songs and chanting is particularly good for teaching things like numbers and the alphabet. In fact, one of the best things about teaching younger children (under 10) is that they are generally less reserved about using another language so they will tend to speak quite early on.

You must always remember to keep the lessons appealing. You could even adapt existing exercises to make them more child-friendly. The possibilities are endless - just be creative. Make a note of methods that are particularly successful so that you can use them again for different topics.

Though it might seem like a good idea to use English children's magazines or comics for your class, it's really not. Most of this material, with perhaps the exception of really basic comics, will be unsuitable for your foreign students. Furthermore, always remember that there will be various culture issues to consider and you certainly don't want to get yourself or your students in trouble. It is much better to use course books and resources specifically designed for young foreign learners of English. These kinds of book are fun and engaging and your students will be able to take much more from them. Having said this, you do not need to follow these books rigidly - in fact it's probably better that you don't. That way you'll be able to make sure you are teaching the relevant material but in a way that allows you to keep the lessons interesting and appropriate for your class.

Also remember that, although young children may not be reading and writing much, it is a good idea to provide them with the written form of any vocabulary introduced. Only do this when appropriate though as the main aim is too keep the lessons fun. A good way of doing this is the use of pre-written vocabulary cards, perhaps even with simple pictures on. This will allow you to have a reference for later use and will help engage the children, gradually familiarising them with the written form of the word.

Finally, be sure to use plenty of revision tasks on a regular basis. These can be implemented in various ways such as games or quizzes - again with the emphasis on learning through fun.