ENGLISH FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

Yella Dezas Perdani

 

Source: https://virlenda.unipasby.ac.id/login/index.php

        Instruction in the English language should start when students are still in elementary school so that younger students can receive assistance in learning English when they move on to higher levels of their educational development. The purpose of teaching English to students in elementary school is twofold: first, to acquaint young students with the English language, and second, to help students develop language skills that can be used to help them in the future. Therefore, it is the responsibility of a teacher to guide young students through the elementary school curriculum using actions. They can instruct the students by having straightforward conversations or utterances, reading straightforward phrases, clauses, and sentences aloud, and producing simple conversations or utterances. Therefore, to familiarize young students with the English language, a teacher can organize activities requiring them to participate in activities while they are learning English. An English teacher in an elementary school cannot explain the lesson to young learners by writing the material on the whiteboard and asking young learners to do exercises in the notebook only. It will cause young learners to become disinterested in learning English and cause the English teacher to lose their job. According to Piaget’s theory, as outlined in Santrock (1994), young students between the ages of 7 and 11 are considered to be in the concrete stage of their cognitive development. It means that students in elementary school can only be taught using concrete examples because they cannot comprehend abstract ideas because demonstrations using more concrete examples do not aid in their education.

           Young students can learn more effectively when they are actively involved in the teaching and learning process. Piaget proposed in Santrock (1994) that the development of young students takes place in distinct stages. These stages include the sensory-motor stage, which occurs between the ages of birth and two, the preoperational stage, which occurs between the ages of two and seven; the concrete operational stage, which occurs between the ages of seven and 11; and the formal operational stage, which occurs between the ages of 11 and adulthood. In addition, the participants in this study are students aged 7 to 11 years old; the research is centered on the appropriate active stage for this age group.

           Furthermore, to assist students in learning in the most efficient manner possible, it is necessary to understand the various learning styles they employ. According to Ramadan et al. (2019), students can acquire the material more effectively when using their preferred learning style appropriately. According to Davis Fleming et al. (2019), “learning style” refers to an individual’s preferred means of gathering, arranging, and thinking about specific information. According to Yuliani et al. (2019), there is a significant impact that a student’s preferred mode of education on their overall acquisition. It can be deduced that each student has unique characteristics and interests and cannot be treated similarly. It does not follow that if one person is proficient in mathematics, the other must also be. According to Saeed et al. (2015), who discovered significant differences in learning styles based on college majors, each major is unique and has its own set of difficulties.

           In summary, English should be taught to elementary school students to help them learn at higher levels. English is taught in elementary school to acquaint students with the language and to aid in the development of future language skills. Therefore, elementary school teachers must use actions to teach their students. They can instruct students by reading aloud simple phrases, clauses, and sentences and by engaging in simple conversations.

References:

Fleming, N. D., & Bonwell, C. (2019). How do I learn best? A learners’ guide to improve learning. Author.

Santrok, J. W. (1994). Child Development. Brown & Benchmark Publishers.

Saeed, M. O., Ondracek, J., Bertsch, A., Shefstad, B., Procyshen, M., & Hernandez, M. (2015). An Investigation of Learning Style Theory and GPA at a U.S. University. Inspira- Journal of Modern Management & Entrepreneurship 1, 5(3), 01–14.

Yuliani, N. D., & Najmiah, L. (2019). Students’ Learning Strategies Based on Their VAK Learning Style. Intensive Journal, 2(1), 41–50.