Starting English Early: Foundations for Pre-Primary EFL Success

Teaching English in Early Childhood (Infantil)

The term 'Infantil' is used here to refer to children aged 3–6. When focusing on Educació Infantil (Early Childhood Education), the foundational question is whether or not to start teaching English 'that early'. Some voices argue that we should wait until children are older and have developed cognitively. However, based on my own experience and the great results achieved in many schools that start teaching English in pre-primary, I would definitely advocate for a positive answer.

Very young children can learn English quickly, particularly in terms of understanding the foreign language, copying new sounds, and naturally reproducing the language that is part of daily routines and activities. Offering very young children the possibility of learning English in Infantil is a wonderful idea and a great opportunity to lay solid foundations for future stages. However, to achieve satisfactory results, schools and teachers must consider several factors before undertaking a project that affects the whole learning process of the children.

Essential Considerations for Early EFL Programs

These considerations can be summarized as follows:

Time of Exposure to English

Daily contact with the language is desirable and necessary, even if the periods of tuition do not exceed 30 minutes. Schools that can offer only, let's say, thirty minutes a week should seriously consider waiting until their offer can be expanded.

Amount of Comprehensible Input

Children are equipped to understand lots of input, not just names of colors, animals, and a few numbers. As long as that input is made comprehensible to them, children will amaze the teacher with their understanding. None of us can imagine talking to our own little son or daughter only in terms of colors, animals, and numbers, can we? Why should we do that with our pupils? Our little pupils deserve the best. Otherwise, the foundations will not be strong enough.

The teacher is responsible for making input comprehensible to the children. The process of learning how to make input comprehensible requires thorough training until the teacher becomes the 'artist' who is able to lead the whole class in the target language—a class in which the children understand and enjoy every minute of what is going on. Obviously, this implies that great emphasis should be put on training student teachers on this issue.

Linguistic Model Offered

Remember that we need solid foundations. Otherwise, the building will be very unstable, and we will miss a lovely opportunity to build a really nice and solid structure. If the teacher cannot offer a good model, he or she is not a good option to teach those children. Very often, schools choose the teacher with the lowest level of English to teach in Infantil. What a great mistake! The children need variety, wealth, and accuracy, simply because they will absorb everything that is offered to them. So, offer them the best!

Content and Curriculum Design

It has already been mentioned that limited lexical sets, like names of colors or animals, are not enough. As a matter of fact, offering only that type of content to children in Infantil is really poor. If there is a stage or teaching/learning cycle in which the children are ready to learn about a great variety of topics, this is Infantil.

As long as the topics are engaging for the children and they are presented to them in the right way, children will be immediately enthusiastic and join in any activity proposed. Stories, songs, Total Physical Response (TPR), and game-like activities, among others, can be part of very successful little projects, some of them CLIL type, in which the language will be simply an inherent part of them, ready to be picked up by learners.

Integrating ICT in Early EFL Classes

Children are immersed in a society where Information and Communication Technology (ICT) plays a key role. Even if ICT is not one of our strengths, we, as teachers, must prepare ourselves to offer the kids good ICT practice in our classes. We must aim at naturally incorporating ICT in our teaching at all levels, including Infantil.

Key Pedagogical Concepts for Young Learners

The Role of Effort and Challenge

Effort when talking about those little kids? Yes, indeed. Those of you who have experience in Infantil classes know that children will learn all the rules very quickly. If you teach them, help them, guide them, support them, and push them to work, they will do most of the things that you propose in class. If you just offer them activities that do not imply any effort or challenge, things will not work nicely, and the learning process will not develop as desired. This does not mean that your classes should be boring at all.

Fostering Creativity in EFL

It is a bit surprising that the word 'creativity' does not appear in the curriculum for Infantil as often as I would have expected. I believe that the magic of creativity should be present in all actions that we take in Infantil, EFL included, and should guide our teaching, offering lots of opportunities to develop the children's capacities to be creative and innovative in their lives.

Oral Comprehension and Production

We have already talked about the need to make input comprehensible to the children to ensure understanding. No doubt that good oral comprehension will lead to oral production. And, after all, oral understanding and oral production are the final aims of our EFL teaching. Oral production is not easy. It would be too long to stop and reflect about theory, but the fact is that speaking a new language is always a big challenge for anyone. For little children, it is a challenge too.

Again, the teacher will have to be 'the artist' to create the highest possible number of appealing situations in class in which the kids want to say or have to say something in English. If the teacher uses English at all stages in his/her class and if the children understand what is said, they will immediately interpret that this is the language of communication and will try to use it. Sometimes the children will not achieve success, but the teacher's support in each situation will be crucial to encourage them to use the language more and more.

Systematic Evaluation and Observation

I must admit that over the years I have changed my mind when I talk about evaluation. While years ago I just trusted the idea that little children would learn somehow and that perhaps it was time to simply enjoy the teaching/learning and to wait until the children grew up, now evaluation for me is something that should be present in each of our teaching actions. In Infantil, I look at evaluation mainly as a steady process that should become a great source of information for the teacher in order to adjust his/her teaching to the group. Of course, evaluation actions in Infantil basically refer to systematic observation and annotations, and not to giving marks to the children.

Teacher Reflection and Professional Growth

Teaching little kids offers immense learning opportunities to the teacher. Observing how the children react to your proposals, how they develop in terms of understanding, and how they start producing orally, can give incredible hints on how to continue teaching them successfully. Sharing findings with colleagues, trying to find an explanation for children's reactions and improvements, and reading about new research and its results, can be really great moments for the teacher and can also lead to great improvements in class.

Required Profile for the Early EFL Teacher

In order to achieve success, what is the necessary profile for the teacher of English in Infantil? For the reasons already mentioned, the teacher of English in Infantil must possess a combination of the following equally important aspects:

• A teacher with the best level of English, not a B1 or similar, but ideally a C1.
• A teacher able to communicate easily with the children by making himself/herself understood in the target language at all stages in class.
• A teacher who is good at using strategies and materials to engage the children in the tasks proposed.
• A teacher who is deeply familiarized with the dynamics of Infantil classes.

Critical Questions on Teacher Training

We must address several critical questions regarding the preparation of future EFL teachers:

1. Do universities provide appropriate pre-service training addressed specifically to EFL Infantil teachers?
2. To what extent do new degree programs take real needs into consideration in terms of methodology and language proficiency?
3. Should student teachers who want to teach English in the future do a part of their practicum abroad? I mean, should they stay in a school in an English-speaking country? I do not mean an Erasmus student, but a real practicum stay in order to get familiarized with as many teaching issues as possible, as well as improving their English. Should this stay be compulsory for all future teachers of English? I believe that a solution should be found for this.
4. The other side of the coin is: Do student teachers take enough opportunities to improve their English and to expand their training by staying in countries where the language is spoken? Should this be compulsory? (Teachers should be acquainted with language and culture too. By living abroad they can cover both objectives.)