English

                                                                    

Characteristics Of Young Learners

For the successful teaching of English in primary schools, it is essential for the teacher to understand the characteristics of young learners, their instincts, and their interest in their cognitive, linguistic, and emotional aspects, because it will play a crucial role in how the teacher builds a lesson, how he or she can make sure that the young learners are fully involved in the learning process, how he or she achieves the objectives of a lesson, and how they respond. In this respect, these lines, in the first place, get the English teacher not only to understand general characteristics of the young learners, but also recognize the qualifications as a primary English teacher. Teacher should understand the young learners’ characteristics from many sides such as physical side, social side, and psychological side. But this essay will just talk about the characteristics of young learners from psychological side.

Young learners have short concentration span. Children can’t focus on one thing for  long time. According to Brown (1994:92), they easy to lose their interest in learning the short attention spans come up only when the teacher present stuff that to them is boring, useless or too difficult. Because of this reason, teachers should give interesting and enjoyable lesson so students can concentrate and enjoy the lesson. Involving young learners in practice the language in class must be effective. Young leraners enjoy learning through playing. They learn best when they learn through games. Let games be an essential part of the teaching.

Young learners get bored easily. Although young learners enjoy learning through games, teacher shouldn’t teach them through games all the time. They will get bored if teachers only teach them through games. To break their boredom, teachers should vary their techniques. They should give varied activities such as handwriting, songs, games and other things that involving them to the teaching learning process so they can enjoy themselves.

Young learners are forgetful. They will forget anything easily, even something that they have just heard. Children respond well through concrete things (visual things) rather than abstract things. So, teachers can use realia or pictures to teach new vocabulary so young learners can remember the word easily. Teachers can also use drilling technique.

Young learners like imitating. They also skillful in listening accurately. So teachers should notice  their pronunciation and what they write on the board because young learners will imimate what they see or hear. If the teachers pronounce some words with the wrong pronunciation, young learners will imitate it. If the teacher write some words with the wrong spelling, young learners will write as what the teacher do. So, teachers should be carefull when they are teaching English to young learners.

Young learners have high curiosity. Teachers should realize that young learners want to know everything and never hesitate to ask everything about it even critical sometimes. They will also curious about the new language that they are learning so the teacher should answer all of their questions.

Young learners are risk taker. They are not afraid to do something that adult think dangerous or embarasing. They will do anything they want to do without thing the risk that they will get if they do the things. For example, they are brave to climb a tall tree and they are not thinking about the risk if they fall from the tree. In relation in language learning, this characteristics is useful because they are not afraid to speak the new language although they make mistakes. Teacher should not get angry when children make mistakes.

Before building a lesson for English teaching for young learners, teachers need to know and understand the characteristics of young learners. By knowing the characteristics above, teachers can make a good lesson plan that is enjoyable and fun so it will be more effective on teaching learning process. Teachers are hoped can give the best teaching activities to the young learners.

            Taken from many sources

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