Teaching English to Children: Building Strong Foundations

INFANTIL:

The word 'infantil' is used here to refer to children 3-6. When we focus on Educació infantil, the foundations, the question is to start or not to start teaching English ‘that early'. Some voices argue that we should wait until the children are older and have developed cognitively. But in my own experience and after seeing the great results achieved in many of the schools that start teaching English in pre-primary, I would definitely go for a positive answer. Very young children can learn English quickly, particularly in terms of understanding the foreign language, copying the 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, in order to achieve satisfactory results, schools and teachers should go through some considerations before undertaking a project that can affect the whole building, i.e. the whole learning process of the children. Those considerations could 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 colours, 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 colours, animals and numbers, can we? Why should 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 to children 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 building. If the teacher cannot offer a good model, he/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:

It has already been mentioned that limited lexical sets, like names of colours or animals is 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, 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.

ICT:

Children are immersed in a society where ICT plays a key role. Even if ICT is not one of our strengths, we, 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. In infantil too.

KEYWORDS: Effort:

Effort when talking about those little kids? Yes indeed. Those of you who have experience in infantil classes know that children will learn very quickly all the rules. 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.

Creativity:

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 guide our teaching, offering lots of opportunities to develop the children's capacities to be creative and innovative in their lives.

Oral understanding and oral production:

We have already talked about the need of making input comprehensible to the children in order 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.

Evaluation:

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 refers to systematic observation and annotations and not to giving marks to the children.

Reflection:

Teaching little kids offer immense learning opportunities to the teacher. Observing how the children react to your proposals, how they develop in terms of understanding and how start producing orally, can give incredible hints on how to continue teaching them successfully. Sharing findings with colleagues, trying to find an explanation to 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.

TEACHER'S PROFILE:

Now the question would be: In order to achieve success, what is the teacher's profile that we need to teach English in infantil? For the reasons already mentioned, the teacher of English in infantil must be: 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. The aspects above are not numbered because a good combination of the four is necessary since they are equally important.

QUESTIONS:

Do universities provide with appropriate pre-service training addressed to EFL infantil teachers? To what extent do nous graus take real needs into consideration in terms of methodology and in terms of language? 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. 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).