Differences in Characteristics between Adults and Young Children- Implications

for English Language Teaching and Assessment of Primary School Children

By Pham Lan Anh _ Ha Noi College of Education- Vietnam

anh730@gmail.com

Introduction
As teachers, we do notice the different learning styles between adult and young learners. Adult
learners can study for themselves and can sit still after a grammar book whereas we hardly expect
the same thing from young children. How special are young children as learners? What helps them
learn best? The article attempts to seek for answers to these questions in the following areas:
Special characteristics of young learners
Child-friendly environment for learning
Some teaching tips
Some assessment tips
A suggested framework

Special characteristics of young learners

Young children are still half the way of cognitive, physical and social development, which presents
clear differences between young learners and adults. It means that:
Children have a natural ability to understand the meaning of a context without understanding
individual words. However, they are not able to understand grammatical rules and
explanations about language
Children can also imitate the sounds they hear quite well and copy the way adults speak and
behave.
Children are continuing to learn from direct experience, through objects and visual aids.
Abstract concepts cannot be understood easily.
Children are imaginative and creative with language. Once their imagination is stimulated,
they want to use language to communicate and they can make up new words from their
limited vocabulary for communicative purposes.
Their attention span is short, as little as 10 to 15 minutes; they are easily distracted by other
pupils or circumstances.
Children are developing the ability to organize information to remember it. This ability is
improved if various senses (hearing, seeing, touching) are used together.
Children are very active and playful; they usually love physical activities as well as having
fun. They tire more easily from sitting than from playing or running.

Child-friendly environment for learning

A learning environment is child-friendly if it helps children learn most from it, taking their
characteristics into account. A primary teacher can create conditions in the classroom that support
language learning, namely:
Create a learning environment where children need and desire to use English
Focus on the meaning of the context, not on grammatical form
Provide opportunities where children can negotiate for meaning without fears.
Provide a variety of activities that make use of different senses
 Provide lots of opportunities for children to practice, with teachers modeling first and
teachers scaffolding during instruction.
Provide a relaxed atmosphere, inviting rather than demanding a response from children.
Encourage and reward children whenever they make their efforts

Teaching tips:

Teaching young children is different to teaching adults. Here are some points worth noticing.
Learning activities should be meaningful, interesting and suitable to the level of the children,
focusing on topics and concepts children have clearly understood in their mother tongue..
There needs a variety of activities with each activity lasting no longer than 10 minutes. Types
of activities should also be varied from visual to audio-visual; from physical to linguistic; or
from quiet to noisy, from sitting to standing and moving to suit various types of children.
Games, stories, songs and physical activities should be exploited as an effective teaching
tool. While having fun with English, children are motivated to pick up language without
conscious learning.
Chunks (i.e: ready-made phrases which can be learnt as a unit, ex: How are you?, Stand
up, please, Nice to meet you.) should be presented in a meaningful context. Depending
on the frequency of English sessions, children can gradually build up and use these ready-
made phrases accordingly for communication. Later on, where necessary, teachers can help
children notice the structure of the chunk without analysing individual words and explaining
grammatical rules.
Teachers should use a lot of facial expressions, gestures, actions, pictures, objects to
demonstrate what they mean. With children it is much better to demonstrate the language
than to explain it.

Assessment tips
Assessing pupils work is a daily feature of classroom practice at all levels Accompanied with child-
friendly learning environment, child-friendly assessment procedures and practices need to be taken
into considerations, since effective assessment encourages effective learning and teaching.
Assessment tasks should be meaningful. There should be an emphasis on meaning in context
rather than on grammatical form.
Young children should not be assessed for things they do not know, rather than that
assessment should focus on classroom activities, which children are familiar with.
A sense of failure early on could badly influence childrens attitudes toward learning.
Therefore, it is important that there must be no pass or fail in assessment at primary
level.
Assessment tasks or activities should be suitable to childrens cognitive and social
development. For example, a simple listening task matching pictures to what they
hear can be suitable to children over 8 years of age, but for children under 7 it
could be difficult because they are still developing the hand eye- ear
coordination.
Assessment tasks should be motivational so that children can perform to their best.
Assessment tasks should also involve physical activity such as response- moving, pointing,
circling or colouring in a picture to encourage young learners to complete the task.
Assessment tasks should take childrens physical development into account, with regard to
tiredness, ability to sit still and hand-eye coordination

A suggested framework:

The interactive relationship between childrens learning, teachers teaching and assessment is so
obvious that ones cannot expect good assessment from bad teaching, or good learning from bad
assessment. Within the process, assessment plays as a teaching tool to facilitate childrens learning.
In order for this process works best in primary English classroom, there is a need for developing a
formative assessment framework with the following features:
Measurable Objectives/Learning Outcomes
Valid Assessment Tasks
Modeling/ Scaffolding during Whole-class Teaching
Informative Feedback
Opportunities for Children to Reflect upon Their Learning

Conclusion

This article has identified some of the skills and characteristics young learners bring to English
classroom, based on which it explores practical implications for effective teaching and assessment.
Hopefully, primary teachers of English find it useful in their rewarding and demanding profession.

You can read more on:

1. Teaching English in the Primary Classroom
Susan Halliwell (Longman: 1992)
2. Children Learning English
Jayne Moon. (Macmillan Heinemann: 2000)
3. An Introduction to Teaching English to Children.
Susan House (Richmond Publishing: 1997)
4. Assessing Young Language Learners.
Penny McKay (Cambridge University Press:2006)