Teach English in Guiwu Zhen - Huai'an Shi

Teaching English to young children in a Kindergarten can be an enjoyable process full of laughter and joy. However, any teacher can face many challenges on his or her way to reach the children’s hearts and minds. Therefore, there are a number of factors that can make the process of studying English at this age unforgettable and I’m going to go through some of them in this summative task. First of all, a good teacher shouldn’t be just a teacher in nursery school, he or she should become their friend and turn all the educational process into a communicative game. All children are positive and curious in nature. That’s why the activities to be used in nursery school should be meticulously planned around curiosity and their eternal positivity. Young kids often get bored that’s why all the activities should be enjoyable and interesting for them, changing all the time, and keep them busy. Even if the class or the place of study is low-budgeted, one can always create a curiosity factor by introducing a new imaginary friend who speaks only English - ‘Look, who is here! Let’s say hello to Skylark!’ Or “Let’s play! Look what I’ve got!’ All children are into curiosity games. In order to understand the children’s needs, a teacher has also to be a good psychologist. This gift will help to fight children’s mood swings and satisfy their attention seeking. A good teacher should know how to manipulate them a little to change their mood if they come from home where they were crying, ‘switch’ them and motivate them to study. Additionally, a good understanding of children’s psychology can help to maintain discipline in class. The discipline in kindergarten can be an issue for an unexperienced teacher. The main problem of children’s bad behavior on the lesson is their boredom, so the teacher has to give clear short instructions in English, be well-prepared and change activities every 8-10 minutes. The stages of the lesson can include various activities and look like this scheme: game-song-game-dance-game-talk-drawing-game. Moreover, signs of appreciation from the teacher play an important role in studying at the young age. That’s why every lesson the teacher should say ‘Attagirl’, ‘Attaboy’, ‘Good Job’ and ‘Thank you’ thousand times for everything the kid does, cause this makes the child feel important and valuable. Appreciation marks are also important such as giving out bright stickers or fruit candy to kids as a part of a motivational program for their good work. Furthermore, a pleasant atmosphere in class and nice bright surroundings help children study, experts say. The classroom or the area for studies in the nursery school should be bright in color, with different posters and carpets with alphabet, numbers, shapes, animals, seasons, different cartoon characters such as Elsa from Frozen, Paw Patrol or Cars that kids love so much. The drawers should be full of useful games and toys. In addition, modern kids love technologies, so using the computer, projector and e-boards on the lesson would be a great step. However, IT time should be strictly limited to 15 minutes by lesson maximum, not to spoil children’s eyesight. Third, pronunciation is the key. Young children pick up the language very easily but they shouldn’t feel it’s a must. It should be a game with all the the changing activities all way through. To make them pick the pronunciation correctly, the teacher has to pronounce everything slowly and in an understandable way, use exaggerated intonation, do some drilling in a form of a game, always reply in English and encourage kids to speak English only. Last but not least, the teacher should have a good sense of humor and be ready to make jokes and make children laugh at him/her. That’s why the EFL lesson time should sound like a fun game time. A teacher of a kindergarten should come over-prepared and be ready with jokes, so there are always a lot of different activities for children to do. Numerous games for kids in a friendly atmosphere make the lesson unforgettable: children sing, dance, sit on the carpet together with their friend-teacher, who makes them laugh and smile a lot. Children will never forget a pleasant lesson like this and will tell their parents and grandparents about it and will repeat the English vocabulary after the lesson all the time. Let’s imagine an ideal lesson at nursery school on the topic of memorizing the animals. It starts with an engage phase where the teacher takes his imaginary friend puppet - Mister Bunny or anyone else (I’ve got them a lot!) and begin a talk with kids. He asks them if they have been to the zoo and what animals they have seen. Even shy kids can start talking to this funny English-speaking puppet. Then the teacher shows lots of pictures of animals and gets the information if kids remember any animal vocabulary. Then goes the introduction song and kids learn to know the names of the new animals. They then could play a game like ‘Simon says’ or ‘Charades’ to learn some activities animals can do: for example, a monkey can climb, an elephant can walk, a fish can swim and so on. Afterwards the teacher can elicit the names of the animals with the help of the big animal play-carpet, which is followed by the drilling of the names of the animals. Then he or she asks the kids what sounds the animals make, they imitate the sounds, and sing a sound song. They can then work on worksheets and color in together a new animal by repeating the colors and parts of the body of the animal. For instance, the teacher gives clear instructions in English first: shows them the worksheet and points on the tail of the animal and says: ‘the tail is brown’. Children take the brown pencil, show it to the teacher, repeat the color and the body part and color it in. The teacher can then activate their knowledge and make the kids play the memory game “Guess who” or go to an interactive zoo in an application on a big screen and guess the animals there. Each activity takes not more than 5-8 minutes that’s why the teacher has to be very careful to mind the time and always make sure that all children can make it on time and be ready to give something new to the quick achievers. In conclusion, every exciting lesson for EFL in Kindergarten should be carefully prepared, taking into account the timing, overall children’s psychology and personality factor. The well-prepared lesson and frequent change of activities influence the children’s behavior. Additionally, getting a child to learn language is done by repetition, encouragement and frequent praise. Finally, a positive environment in classroom itself plays a very important role in the studying process.