Essay on "Teaching English to Young Learners: Teaching ESL"

Essay 3 pages (1497 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

She will then ask the children in turns to compare other nouns within the classroom. Afterwards, she will formulate several examples in the superlative form, and ask the children to do the same using the nouns that they had earlier compared. The children will then formulate and record the comparative and superlative forms using the adjectives 'big', 'small', and 'long' by comparing the giant's shoe print with their own shoe print, and that of some of their classmates. The expected responses include:

The giant's hand can take up XXX bean seeds; my hand can only handle XXX seeds.

The giant's shoe takes up XXX cubes

My shoe print takes up XXX cubes

XXX's shoe print is half as long as the giant's

My shoe print (hand) is smaller than the giant's

XXX's shoe print and hand print are bigger than/smaller than YYY's

XXX's shoe print is the smallest in the class

Review Game (30 minutes): the core function of the review game is to cement the children's understanding of comparative and superlative forms of adjectives as well as the vocabulary learnt from the 'Jack and the Beanstalk' story. The teacher will write the new words learnt from the story on the board, and ask the children to develop two sentences -- one in a comparative form and the other in a superlative form using adjectives of their choice. The children will then take turns to read their sentences out to the class, and children will have the pleasure of correcting their colleagues.

Part Two: Short Answers to Questions

1. Which of the above questions do you associate with reading/listening comprehension?

Reading/listening comprehension is a demonstration of how well a child has understood the story, and consequently, how well they can apply it to real life situations. Question 12 is associated with reading/listening comprehension in this case.

Possible Teaching Aims of Questions 1, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 11

The aforementioned questions all focus on some aspect of the English language. Question 1, for instance, aims at teaching adjectives. The children will respond with 'poor', an adjective, and the teacher could define the term 'adjective', and have the children pick out other adjectives from the story. Questions 6 and 8 are geared at teaching the concept of 'verbs'. The children will respond with 'he ran', 'he hid', 'he died'; and to cement their understanding, the teacher could ask them to locate more verbs in the story. Questions 10 and 11 are geared at teaching the concepts of indefinite pronouns and adverbs respectively. Question 4, unlike the others, assesses the children's ability to correctly use gestures, particularly their hands, to visualize things.

2. Possible Teaching Aims of Questions 2,3,5,7, 9 and 12

These questions are geared at testing the children's degree of imagination and their ability to visualize unfamiliar things using more familiar things that they interact with regularly. The children will need to imagine what Jack's house looked like, the giant's size, the size of his shoes, and how much a golden egg cost based on what they see in movies and in everyday life. Moreover, they will need to visualize what Jack's grandmother bought with her golden eggs based on what they think they would have done in the same situation. These aims can be realized effectively through such techniques as spider diagrams and concept maps, which require learners to first visualize a situation before verbalizing it.

3. Ways of Improving Comprehension Questions

I strongly believe that I can improve the comprehension questions that I pose to my learners by i) ensuring that they make use of the key words identified in the pre-teaching phase to cement the learners' understanding and visualization of the same; and ii) ensuring that the questions are not only literal, but also interpretive and applied, requiring the learner to think critically and incorporate knowledge from other branches of learning such as science and math

4. Improving the Comprehensive Questions for a Selected EFL Story

The link to the reading comprehension 'Seven Ways to Protect the Environment' has been included in the references section of this text. The reading has three comprehension multiple-choice questions that require the learner to indicate their most preferred choice of answer. The questions could be modified to be more interpretive; for instance, Fluorescent light bulbs save energy, how? The seven tips save both energy and money, explain? The modified questions would trigger creativity and criticality in the learner, and will require them to consult with the field of… READ MORE

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