Iman Hilmansyah

1402203
Teaching English for Young Learners
27 October 2014

Teaching English to young learners in Indonesia: Essential

requirements
This article explain about what the English teacher should know and be able
to do.
There are several requirements for effective teaching of English to young
learners, such as:

Accomplished teacher of English should know who children are. It

means that if we want English teaching to work as expected, it should
first of all be ensured that teachers hold an appropriate perspective
about who children are because almost all pedagogical decisions the

teachers would make steam for this perspective.

Accomplished teacher of English should know how children learn. It
means that as a good teacher, we have to know the way children learn
English. There are five learning style that have to know by the teacher:
the first is that children learn from direct experiences, then children
learn from hands-on physical activities, after that we have to know that
childrens thinking is embedded in here-and-now context of situation,
teacher have to realize that children learn from whole to partsholistically-using script, and the last is that children have short

attention span.
Accomplished teacher of English should know how children learn a
language. Basically, they have to know that students acquired
language from direct contact with language in use, including observing
and participating in literacy practice; watching how people read and
write for functional real purposes; and participating in literacy events.

Besides that, there are three important points in teaching language to

children: exposure to the language, engagement, and consistent

support.
Accomplished teachers of English should know how children learn
English as foreign language. Here we have to know the problem of
teaching English has very limited function in social intercourse in
Indonesia, English as local content means very limited contact hours,
and

the

decision

to

teach

English

to

young

learners

is

not

complemented with a systematic preservice and in-service training.

Accomplished teachers of English should know the principles and
should be able to do things to facilitate children learning English as a
foreign language in Indonesia. It means that teacher should be able to
handle all of the obstacle that appear when we teach English to young
learners in Indonesia.

Besides all of those requirements teachers also should be able to proposed

good classroom practice, such as:

English is to be used all the time to ensure that children have relatively

much exposure to English.

Print-rich environment in English should be created in and around the

classroom.
Teachers of English for young learners should use activity based

teaching-learning techniques such as TPR, games, and projects.

Teacher of English for young learners should use various techniques for
short period of time to maintain the interest level of the children in

engaging the English lesson.

Teachers of English for young learners should focused on functional
English for vocabulary development, and for immediate fulfillment of

communicative needs of the learners.

Teachers of English for young learners should reiterate often to ensure
the acquisition of English expressions or vocabulary items.

Teacher

of

English

for

young

acquisition-promoting routines.

learners

should

provide

useful,