Print this page

Very Young Learners (4 - 8): What can we do with them?

Speaker: Jane Delaney
Moderator: Jenny Johnson
Date: Saturday 2 December 2000.

What can we do in the EFL class with this age group? What are the problems we might have? Is it worth starting to teach a foreign language so young?

Jane Delaney is Director of Studies at International House Tarragona, Spain, working with adult students and Younger Learners in the 4 - 17 age range. She is especially interested in pre-school and early years education. She has run many workshops on young learner teaching and is a teacher trainer on the Cambridge/RSA young learners training course.

MODERATOR> Hi everybody! Today we're talking with Jane Delaney, who has a great deal of experience with this very young learner age group. Hello Jane.

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Hello Jenny, nice to virtually see you!

MODERATOR> While we're waiting for people to send us their questions, can you tell us what the two most important issues when teaching VYLs are?

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Well, Jenny, I think that we need to recognise that teaching VYLs is very different from teaching teenagers and adults and we have to alter our expectations of our students somewhat.

MODERATOR> In what ways?

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Well, in terms of behaviour of our students and also in terms of what we expect them to achieve. I think that sometimes we expect our children to produce far more language than they might be able too, for example, and we often construe their behaviour in the class as naughtiness or not paying attention. I think we forget that they are only children after all! Sometimes we require them to do activities that require them to sit still for long periods of time or do things such as sentence writing or cutting and sticking which may be cognitively beyond them. We have to be constantly aware of what the children are capable of doing in their own language.

MODERATOR> Yes, I'm sure these are particularly significant issues in the VYL classroom. I have a question now from jt darcy. Hello jt!

jtdarcy> Jane, what should some of our objectives be for teaching vyls?

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Hi jt! Thanks for the question. Well, my objectives when teaching VYLs is never solely to get them producing target language. I try to always keep in mind that we are trying to educate the whole child, not just the part of their brain which learns language. Whatever we do in the classroom with them forms a part of their entire learning experience. I really believe that young children are like sponges, and my objectives are to stimulate them in any way I can. They have such a tremendous capacity for learning, although they don't always seem to learn what we want them to learn! Sometimes I feel that my objective for the entire lesson might be just to make the children sit still!!

jtdarcy> How long should a class for 4-8 yr. olds last?

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Mm, jt, that depends. Personally, I think that for 4 to 5 year olds 30 to 45 minutes is long enough, bearing in mind the fact that in some countries they come to us after a very long day at school. The 7 and 8 year olds might have a class for an hour, a couple of times a week. I think that it's not just the length of the lesson, it's the length of the individual activities we use with them.

Alex> Hello Jane! My question is: How can we motivate children to learn English when we know they do not like it. I'm talking specifically about Spanish children learning English as a second language.

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Hi Alex, thanks. Personally, I think that the children in this 4-8 age group don't need much motivating, as they have a tremendous desire to learn anyway. It's only when they become teenagers that the boredom factor kicks in! Very young children have such an interest in the world around them that they seem to be interested in everything. They are used to not understanding everything that goes on around them as well, which I think is to our advantage as teachers of a second language.

Alex> Well, I know some who are not so interested in everything. They do not want to learn English although we try changing activities, playing games, songs... and it is so difficult to motivate them. What else could we do?

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Mmm, a tough one, Alex! Do the children come after school? Are they learning English at their state school? We have to be really careful if children so young are being turned off learning, as we don't want them to be put off the experience for life! Could a part of it be that the level of difficulty is too great for the students? Could we be doing more activities of the kind they do in their own schools, more cross-curricular things? I also think that sometimes some VYLs pretend that they are not interested in learning, which often is a cry for attention from the teacher.

MODERATOR> Hello Nacho. Here's your question:

Nacho> Hi! I have been trying to teach my 4-year-old son some English for the past two years and I do not think he is like a sponge. Only after two years he is starting to enjoy singing in English but at first he got angry when I talked to him in English. I would like to take him with me next time I go to England to do a summer course, but how can I get information about local nursery schools or activities where he can play with English kids?

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Hi Nacho! It's great what you're trying to do with your son! Do you always speak to him in English, or your native language? I have found that often small children find it very confusing if a parent speaks to them in two different languages. Sometimes it creates an insecurity. It's a great idea about the nurseries. I know of several in England which do this kind of thing. You need to contact the Local Education Authority of the town where you will be staying. If your son gets to meet other English speaking children of his age it might make the language more 'real' for him, and less strange.

Nacho> Yes, I speak Spanish to him, but I wanted to find a time when I could introduce English as part of our games, so that the shock when he first goes to England is lessened. Now we sing songs and point at words. What should we do next?

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> I think that this age is the perfect time to be working on listening skills, exposing him to as much authentic language as possible. This is the great thing about children this age, they are not so afraid as adults sometimes are of not understanding every word. We can stimulate his senses as much as possible, using video clips in short bursts, that sort of thing. I also think it's great to be exposing him to the written word in English, although not necessarily expecting him to 'read' to you. However the most important thing may be to stop your 'input sessions' with him as soon as he shows signs of being bored.

jtdarcy> Creating a need for the language is the key in motivation, isn't it? How can we create that need?

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Well, I think that need is automatically created with learners in the 4-8 age range if their teacher shows that they like to be with them. This means that the children want to please the teacher and want to find out more about him or her. Things that children would normally be doing in their own language are also very motivating, as for example in storytelling where everyone wants to know what happens next to the beautiful princess. If the children are involved they are motivated.

jats3> Hi Jane, I'm following Nacho's questions and your answers to him, and my question concerning your topic is: to what extent can a speaker of English as a second language interfere with the process of getting good pronunciation of the target language?

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Hi jats. Mmm, this is a tough one! Of course, us native speakers are in business because of our pronunciation, but I would hate to think that a parent or teacher who is a non-native would always interfere with the child's pronunciation. I think an important factor is that the child is exposed to authentic language. I think that listening to language spoken with accurate pronunciation is overridden by any interference, as long as the child hears language spoken naturally, i.e. in songs, videos, storytelling cassettes etc. then the child may not be affected too much.

jats3> My son, who's nine, often asks me to talk to him in English but I don't have much experience in this age

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> OK, I think that's great that your son is so interested! Of course, speak to him in English for as long as he is prepared to listen to you! There is a theory that says that much of children's development is self-correcting and it doesn't really matter if they hear mistakes and poor pronunciation as long as they also hear a lot of natural, native-speaker like language. Quite often I find that children have 'two voices'. They have the pronunciation that they use in their English classes with their native English teachers and they have a 'separate' voice that they use when speaking to their own teachers or amongst other non-natives.

jats3> Thanks Jane. It's a pleasure to share your experience as well as your personal points of view on teaching

jtdarcy> How can we get teachers to not be afraid of vyls?

Maria> Like me! I'm terrified of them.

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Ha! If I knew the answer to this, I would be a rich woman! I think that a lot of new teachers are afraid of the unknown, they fear that their classes will be like a zoo and the children will eat them alive! What teachers really need before they get into the classroom is some sort of knowledge about the cognitive development of their students, what they are capable of in their own language, and what our expectations of the particular age group is and, perhaps most importantly, we need to give new teachers help with classroom management showing them that by setting up routines in the classroom we can make our lives a lot easier. Once teachers know what is acceptable behaviour in the class and what isn't, it makes things a lot easier. I think it is a real shame that so often we send inexperienced teachers into the classroom who have very little knowledge of child development or behaviour.

jats3> (to jtdarcy) I've been teaching for 19 years and fear is there the first year and the more experience you have the less fear you feel.

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Yes, I agree, jats! However I feel that so many of us learn by trial and error, when really a little bit of theory at the beginning would have been very helpful. What worries me is that if we start teaching a foreign language early, we have to do it well or we risk putting the children off for life. It can result in a negative experience for the teacher, and, more
importantly, for the child.

vlada> How can I make monolingual classes speak English to each other ?

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Monolingual classes? Well, it depends on the age. I think that to insist that a group of six year olds speak only English to each other during the whole class is bordering on cruelty! No, seriously, with the 4-8 age range I don't always expect them to produce a lot of spoken language, and when they do speak, it is sometimes a nice idea to give them very clear guidelines about when the target language is to be spoken. For example when I want the class to speak only English I often let them use their teddy bear puppets, as everyone knows that teddy bears only speak English to each other. The children sometimes wear their animal masks to speak the target language, but I never insist on it for very long as I think that it is very difficult for them to keep it up although I insist on classroom language quite a lot, even with the 4 and 5 year olds. For example they must use the English words when they ask for the scissors, the toilet etc, and they must say please and thank you.

Catherine McFarlane> Where I work we have maximum 10 students in the classes. Do you think that's too many students in a vyl class?

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Hi Catherine, thanks for the question! No, I don't think 10 is too many (a lot of teachers teach in classes of 30 or 40!), although personally my optimum number of students in a VYL class is 8. I have found that often very small classes (groups of 4 or 5) VYLs can take much longer to gel. 10 however is a nice number for dynamics and it means that you can spend more time with individuals.

Catherine McFarlane> Thanks Jane. I think my big challenge is the size of classrooms. We have very little space and lots of the activities I'd like to do need space.

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Yes, Catherine, I know that feeling! So much of what we do with the very little ones requires a lot of space, and it can be very tiring if you have to keep stacking the classroom furniture in the corner. It's not ideal to have VYLs in small classrooms, in fact in my school the policy is to give the little ones the biggest classrooms, although they may be smaller groups in terms of numbers. Talking of space, I also think it's very important to create different spaces in the classroom for different activities, for example a certain corner for telling stories, a certain way of sitting and facing when we do some writing, that kind of thing. Having a special space on the classroom wall for the work of only that group is also important.

eserbelul> Hi Jane, I'm an ELT student, and I want to know at what age it is suitable to start teaching a foreign language since I think it will be problematic to expose a child to a foreign language before he/she develops his mother tongue.

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Hi, eserbelul, what a question! There is a great debate about 'the earlier the better' with a lot of research and disagreement. Personally, I believe that if children are more or less proficient in their own language by the age of 4, then there is no problem in starting then or earlier. Children are capable of so much, they can do so much more than we give them credit for. Often we hold them back because we are afraid. I think that the fear that we don't provide enough stimulus for children has more justification than the fear that our stimulation will 'warp' them because it's unsuitable or interferes with their development:

eserbelul> I know a child who was born in Germany and his family is Turkish and the kid speaks both languages but doesn't know which is which so ends up mixing them all the time.

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Mm, how old is the child?

eserbelul> He is about three

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Bilingual children tend to go through stages when they confuse the two languages, it's a kind of 'code-switching'. I think it's important the same person speaks to the child in the same language all the time and doesn't change. I think this mixing of languages however is a normal stage.

MODERATOR> My daughter mixed up English, Spanish and Catalan until she was about 4 or 5, but it all comes out well now! Jane, thank you very much for all your advice and suggestions. This has been a really useful chat!

Catherine McFarlane> Thanks, Jane, and to you too, moderator. This was my first chat by the way.

eserbelul> Thank you all. This was my first chat too and has been very useful!!

R Wade> I feel that the majority of EFL teaching is for children and the teacher training emphasis is on adults so chats like this are very useful. Thank you and bye for now

SPEAKER_Jane Delaney> Well, thanks to YOU, everybody. I have to get back to celebrating, as Tarragona has been selected as a World Heritage Site, so it's fiesta in the streets!

MODERATOR> Have a lovely time and thanks very much again. Bye, everybody. See you next time.