EYL COURSE NOTES

EYL Course Project

The syllabus for this course requires a project. Here is some information that will assist you in preparing your course project:

1. You will work with a partner and produce a lesson plan containing information on the timing, content, steps, rationale and materials for a 30-minute English language lesson for young learners.

2. Make sure your names are on the lesson plan when you submit it.

Grade (30% of overall course grade):

You will be graded on the extent to which your lesson plan meets these criteria: A. Complete (10%) - Is all information on your lesson plan?

B. Appropriate (10%) - Is the lesson appropriate to the age and proficiency level of the students identified? Materials should be of high interest and appropriate to the students. C. Accurate (10%) - Does your lesson plan reflect full and clear understanding of the concepts we have addressed in the class?

Note: You should make reference to at least one concept learned in this class for each step in your lesson plan. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask here on FB or in class.

Due date; May 14-16, 2013 P

Please try hard to get this assignment done on time. Late projects will not be accepted.

1. Introduction to the course Theoretical Concepts

1. Children actively try to construct meaning and need space for language growth (zone of proximal development, Vygotsky).

2. Language use carries clues to meaning that students may not notice.

3. Language development is internalizing from social interaction.

4. Learning comes from thought that is derived from action (assimilation/accommodation) (Piaget).

5. Learners need scaffolds and routines to help them attend to what is important (and learn). Bruner

6. Foreign language learning depends on experience. (All)

7. Not all of what is learned can be or is taught. Some basic concepts and knowledge come as a result only of experience. So, teaching has limitations (but good teaching is needed to provide an environment for natural learning).

8. Teaching young children English does not mean, "let them play." Rather, teaching young children English requires carefully designed lessons that provide students with the complex language they need in order to be able to use the language.

2. Learning Language Through Tasks and Activities

Task as learning environment

Task demands and task support in six categories: cognitive, linguistic, interaction, metalinguistic, involvement, physical

Balance between demands and support

Language learning goals are always essential to keep first in mind - we are teaching language, not task-doing!

Tasks are real - meaningful to students, contextualized, form-focused, appropriate (to age and proficiency level), attached to language learning goals, and involve learners in the activity

Tasks have 3 stages: preparation, core and follow-up

3. Learning The Spoken Language

Teaching spoken English requires children to both use and learn the language:

Meaning comes first Vygotsky and Piaget teach us that children actively construct meaning from their experiences in the world. Vygotsky focuses on the value of social interaction with others; Burner addresses the role of scaffolding.

Human desire to make contact with other people.

When we interact, we use words to try to make sense of our own and other people's meaning.

Discourse skills require children to participate in their learning as well as to build up their knowledge in order to participate

Discourse = a) a concern with language use; and b) a concern beyond a sentence (so, in speaking, we think of conversations, lectures, etc. - language used in a longer exchange or speaking)

Teachers have to check with learners to see if the meaning is accessible to them: A good teacher asks: "Can this child find or construct the meaning in this activity?"

Listening and speaking: Children listen and get the meaning of contexts in their experiences (to stories, for example, or listening to a conversation between parents or between friends).

"Comprehensible input" (Krashen, 1982) is what helps children learn new information through listening/talking.

Children adjust their "output" by considering "input."

However, children are not computers (with input and output). Rather, children creatively construct meaning. So, Krashen's concepts are not that good in explaining students' abilities to listen and speak.

Tasks help students by creating opportunities to share meaning through the use of the foreign language.

Discourse skills developed in childhood:

1. Conversation and extended talk and conversation skills - longer turns in a conversation and a degree of interaction skill;

2. Conversational skill development: taking responsibility for how other people will understand what you say and for making sure that you understand them is an aspect of discourse that develops with age. Young learners lack awareness of how to cater for other participants in discourse, and are not very skillful in planning their talk. As listeners, they understand others' talk to the extent of their social and cognitive resources. Children blame themselves if they do not understand something said to them. Research confirms that only older children can be trained to be effective communicators.

3. Children should not be asked to engage in social or other interactive activities without understanding those. So, teachers provide learning environment and tasks that students do understand, patterns that are familiar (from home and family) and should not demand that children do things they cannot do. Summarizing someone else's point of view, for example, is too hard for a young child and should not be assigned.

4. Researchers have identified these different types of talk as appropriate for young learners:

- Narratives - Descriptions -Instructions - Arguments - Opinions

5. The language of narrative - Bruner argues that narrative discourse and mental organization are primary in children's development.

6. Description (or non-narrative discourse) - appearance, habits, categorizations, origin, natural habitat - familiar to children.

7. In summary, 3 points: To effectively develop discourse skills of young learners, teachers may be aware of these:

A. Types of discourse - their organization and components; the language forms that are typically used in their construction;

B. An understanding of children's developing communication skills and cognitive abilities;

C. The educational significance of paradigmatically organized discourse.

Supporting children's language discourse skills: Use motivating topics Structure tasks well and clearly Lead students in practicing new language Support spoken language through written language through dialogs

Finally, a summary of tips in teaching spoken language to young children:

1. The meaning and purpose of discourse needs to be made accessible to learners; 2. Personal involvement in the talk with increase participation; 3. Speaking (contributing to discourse) makes different demands from listening and understanding; 4. When demands are too high, children will tend to produce single words and formulaic expressions; 5. Children are capable of participating in narrative and simple descriptive discourse; 6. Short practice activities can help build productive language to use in discourse; 7. A dialog should be seen as a text that offers learning opportunities; those will not necessarily be for discourse skills development.

4. Learning Words

So, learning language means using it in the classroom. Right? Building up a good vocabulary is essential at the primary level. Learning words also comes from participating in discourse level activities in the classroom.

1. Since children at a young age are still learning words in their first language, a process tied with concept development, learning second language vocabulary is not a simple, doit-once task. 2. There are parts of vocab learning and linking them up is essential for teachers to support learners in doing.

The word as a unit words, yes, but also formulaic phrases (units of meaning) like Mommy read! Words like flowers growing in the ground all we see is the flower; but underneath is a big, complex root system.

Very young (5-7 year olds) children usually have partial knowledge of vocabulary words. Vocabulary size English has about 54,000 words (Nation & Waring, 1997) and no one knows all of them; most adults use 20,000 words; child native speakers use about 4000-5000 words, to which they add about 1,000 words per year.

Given good learning conditions, Indonesian children will do well to learn 500 words per year. What is knowing a word? It means that in most contexts, the child can recognize and use the word correctly. Note: Vocab knowledge is NOT ALL OR NOTHING.

Knowing a word = a lot of knowledge

1. Receptive knowledge, memory, conceptual knowledge,

2. Knowing of the spoken form of the language (phonological knowledge), 3. Grammatical knowledge (knowing how to use it in a grammatically accurate way), 4. Collocational knowledge (know which other words go with it): 5. Orthographic knowledge (how to spell it); 6. Pragmatic knowledge (how to use it in the right situation); 7. Connotational knowledge (positive/negative associations with related words); and 8. Metalinguistic knowledge (how the word how it works pro is a prefix).

See it means A LOT to say a child knows a word!

Conceptual knowledge (to which words are tied) grows with experiences and child development. Schooling should have an impact on learning conceptual knowledge and ability to use languages (both English and bahasa Indonesia).

Categories of words Furniture chair rocking chair Animal dog spaniel

Cultural knowledge as a part of vocabulary development - different cultural groups organize concepts in different ways.

Summary: 1. Types of words that children find it possible to learn will change over time. 5-year-olds learn concrete vocabulary (things they can see); older kids learn more abstract and remote concepts. 2. Vocabulary development is not about learning words only; its about expanding concepts, then putting words to them. 3. Words and word knowledge can be viewed as being linked in networks or categories.

4. Basic level words are better for younger children; older learners can benefit from building up superordinate and subordinate vocab; 5. Children change in how they can learn words

Function and content words That old box in the corner belongs to my sister.

Content words are taught directly; function words are taught in different contexts.

Kids need sources of support to help them when they encounter new words they need to learn meanings of words, make a strong memory connection between forms and meanings of words; and to use words.

Use objects, photos, pictures, drawings, diagrams, cut-out figures, gestures, actions (role play, drama), verbal explanations that are clear and require prior knowledge.

Make logical categories for vocabulary: Hot-warm-cold Vegetables cabbages, celery, carrots Always-usually-sometimes, never

WORK OUT (AWAY FROM) TEXTBOOK & extend beyond the textbook

Give choices

Incidental learning through stories, narratives, conversations

Finally, how children learn words:

1. Empirical evidence on strategy use shows that shifts occur between younger and older children in what strategies they use and how they use them. Teachers need to keep up with childrens development and not apply strategies that are disconnected with childrens strategies 2. Guessing, 3. Noticing, 4. Remembering (memorizing)

Teachers should try to help children to notice the strategies the children use to learn new words and to help them to develop those strategies.

5. TEACHING GRAMMAR

Grammar does have a place in young learner classrooms. But the teacher of young learners can probably best help to develop childrens grammar in the foreign language, NOT BY TEACHING GRAMMAR DIRECTLY, but by BEING SENSITIVE TO OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAMMAR LEARNING THAT ARISE IN THE CLASSROOM. A grammar-sensitive teacher will see the language patterns that occur in tasks, stories, songs, rhymes and classroom talk, and will have a range of techniques to bring these patterns to the childrens notice, and to organize meaningful practice. To do this well requires considerable knowledge and teaching skills. ~ Lynne Cameron

Children do not notice grammar. And teachers can help them to do that using meaningful exchanges between students and between students and teacher. Childs Internal Grammar In the early stages, young learners string together words and chunks to get their meanings across. Psychological development research and social

factors combine to show us the actual need young learners have for grammar. Kids learn through hypothesis testing trying out, guessing and making mistakes. Managing learning means that teachers must figure out creative ways of addressing childrens evolving internal grammar. Transfer from L1 Malaysian children miss the difference between present and past because in their language, use of these endings do not carry useful information. Spanish L1 speakers are confused often by the position of pronouns due to differences between their first language, Spanish, and English. Teaching grammar as explicit rules learning as building blocks One view is that we should drill students in grammatical forms. Some students do well with drills. Others ignore the drill experience. OCCASIONAL DIRECT teaching of grammar is recommended for teachers who want students to learn to use English grammar.

TPR is great for grammar teaching, especially for beginners. However, kids need output to learn grammar, too (not only teacher-input grammar instruction).

Noticing and attention to input but output too.

NOTICING -> STRUCTURING -> PROCEDURALIZING

Teachers Support meaning as well as form Present the form in isolation, as well as in context; Contrast the form with others, which Ss already know; Require active participation by learner; Be at a level of detail appropriate to learners; and Lead into, but not include, activities that manipulate language

Activities should require learners to Manipulate language, changing form to express meaning Be required to choose content that requires grammar adjustments and Have time most results of structuring work will still be internal among young learners

PRINCIPLES Grammar is taught as a part of meaning Form will be learned whether attended to or not Form-focused instruction is relevant for those features of the grammar that are different from L1

EYLs LEARN GRAMMAR AS THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNAL GRAMMAR

TEACHING TECHNIQUES FOR SUPPORTING GRAMMAR LEARNING

1. Work from discourse to grammar 2. Language of classroom management is the first source of meaning for EYLs 3. Talk with children 4. Guide students in noticing: Listen, then notice 5. Use puppets, questionnaires, surveys and quizzes, information gap activities, helping hands activities, drills and chants

HELP LEARNERS TO AUTOMATIZE THEIR USE OF GRAMMATICAL FORMS INTRODUCE GRAMMAR USING TEACHER TALK Cloze activities

6. LEARNING LITERACY SKILLS second language literacy is a complicated area and as far as young learners are concerned, there is much that remains unknown. In the absence of relevant research findings, we will often

need to rley on clear thinking and carefully monitored practice as guides in the classroom. Lynne Cameron

Reading and writing are taught and learned as a means of expressing and sharing meanings between people.

Skills: recognizing individual letters, knowing syllables to make up words, use information from the whole text and the context. Reading is dependent on visual, phonological and semantic information in a context all at once!

What do skilled readers do? Skilled readers are able to access information from many different knowledge bits in order to construct the meaning of what they read: Context, text, Paragraph, Sentence/clause, Words, Morphemes, syllables and letters What influences a childs ability to read in a second language: the nature of the written forms, the learners prior experience with L1 literacy, the learners knowledge of the new language; and the learners age. L1 literacy knowledge includes backward transfer, or being able to apply second language reading skills to native language reading; methodology used to teach children literacy skills in their first language; and social aspects of first language literacy some L1s have no written forms. L2 knowledge phonological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, ability to sound out words (children should always be required to read texts for which they already have spoken language equivalencies); age very young children are still learning how written text functions, so that they may not be able to transfer even the most general concepts about text and print.

Objectives for readings age 5-7 years: Text attitudes toward literacy; being read to from a range of books, enjoying looking at books; point conventions learn how text is written down in lines and pages, with space between words, capital and small letters; participate in a variety of literacy events in school and link to out of school literacy activities and events. Sentence learn to copy short sentences that have a personal meaning Words learn basic set of words by sight, begin to spot words and letters in books Morphemes/syllables listen to rhymes, chants, songs and by joining them, learn by hart and be able to say or sing them Letters/sounds learn the names, shapes and sounds of some initial consonants; begin to learn the alphabet, in order, by name. Creating a literate environment in the classroom labels for objects in the room, posters, messages, reading aloud Active literacy learning attention to details, fun with literacy skills Emergent literacy Language Experience Approach starts children reading and writing at the sentence level child and teacher write sentences together; words have a physical reality, punctuation is present and reading and writing are integrated.

Whole words/key words

Phonics teaching

Steps in teaching reading skills: 1. Start with a meaningful context

2. Focus students attention on the unit and key features being taught 3. Give input examples, rules, etc. 4. Provide variation in the ways students practice reading 5. Give students opportunities to apply their new knowledge and skills in different, meaningful and varied contexts

Literacy features to teach: sight words, initial consonants, rimes, final consonants, vowels, morphemes, consonant clusters and blends

Reading and Writing as Discourse-level Skills

What is fluency in reading and writing?

The use of reading skills will, over time, become more automatic, faster and easier. For writing, students should be encouraged to write often and at length. This kind of writing should not be corrected but it might be responded to by the teacher who reads the writing now and then and writes thoughts down about ideas the child has written.

Learning to write for different audiences, including formats and conventions of various types of writing.