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Children love being read to and are naturally drawn to children books. This is true regardless of culture or language differences. When teaching to young learners, children books can be a valuable resource to teach English. Children books are designed to engage children, and children books use simple language in context. In addition, there are many follow - up activities that can be incorporated in lesson plans after reading to extend language learning. Children books are designed to draw children’s attention because they use pictures, and create a bright engaging visual for the story. Children and students learning English need many visuals to understand the language and children books always have many pictures. Another way children books are engaging is that they have characters that relate to readers. Usually the characters are children, or animals, which children love. For example, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” is a beloved story by many, and I consider a very engaging book because it has many brightly colored pictures, and the main character is a caterpillar, which is an animal that children know. Not only are children books engaging, but they also are educational in teaching children about language in context. Most children books are stories based on real life situations, and so, uses language that is natural. Since there are also pictures that connect with the words in the books, if you doesn’t know the meaning a word, you can look at the pictures and figure it out that way. Also, the language is usually simple and easy for children. But children books can use advance vocabulary, which is one of the good things about children books is that they increase vocabulary in children. For example, sometimes a more advance word replaces an easier word, like using the word “clever” instead of “smart”, but because children books have easy language and plenty of pictures, it’s easy to infer the meaning from context. Reading children books not only increase vocabulary, but there are also many follow-up activities to after reading that can help teach vocabulary, grammar, listening, speaking, and writing skills too. If we use the book, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” as an example, there are a plethora of activities that can be used to reinforce the English being taught in the book. This book goes over food vocabulary, days of the week, and numbers. Some activities that can reinforce vocabulary are memory with words and pictures of food, or Pictionary with words and pictures of foods. Students can also play a card game of “goldfish” but with cards with different foods and different number of foods. For a writing activity, you can have children draw and write what they ate for each of their meals, and show it to the class. These are just activities that I thought on my own for this book, but there are tons of resources online for other books with follow up activities. Some children books even have songs and chants that go with them. The activities are endless if you have a little bit of creativity and the book itself. Overall, children books are a very useful resource for TEFL teachers. Young children and people of all ages enjoy children books. Children books use pictures to engage in children, and teaches simple contextual language. There are many follow-up activities with children books. Children books should be utilized in the English language classroom because of these reasons.
