LETS PLAY THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE
GAME
Workshop for Teachers of
English
Level: Elementary school
A1

Ezequiel Alvarez Cuesta

Teacher of English Language and

Culture
Universidad del Atlntico
Facultad de Ciencias de la
Educacin
Idiomas Extranjeros

LETS PLAY THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE
GAME
Goals:
To acquire principles to
teach English to Children
To practice strategies to
teach English in a funny way.

Target: Elementary school

Teachers of English

TeachingChildren
Intellectual Development:
According to Piaget, children
from 6 to 11 are in the
concrete operation stage.
Therefore, they can not
understand grammar rules.

How do children learn a

foreign language?
Childrenlearna
languageasawhole,as
partofawholelearning
experience.
Itistheresponsibilityof
teacherstoprovidethis
wholelanguagelearning
experience.

Manychildrengothrough
asilent periodduring
whichtheyare
processingtheir
languageenvironment.
Childrenshouldbe
allowedtolearnattheir
wnpace...

How do children learn a

language? Vale and Feunteun
It is very important for children to have the
opportunity to use their hands and their
bodies to express and experience language.
In an dveryday context in an English
speaking country, children are normally
exposed to a variety of physical and
intellectual experiences of language.
In the foreing learning situation where
chidlren may have as little as one hour per
week of English, it is vital to include physical
activities where the main focus is on the
physical response or phyisical activity, and
not the spoken word.

Intellectual Development
H. Douglas Brown recommends:
Dont explain grammar using terms
like:present progressive or adverb clause.
To explain grammar, show learners patterns
and examples: He is brushing his teeth. She is
putting on her coat.
Certain difficult concepts or patterns need
more repetition.
Repetition help the ear and the brain to
acquire the patterns.

Attention Span
H. Douglas Brown thinks children
do not have short attention spans.
But they get bored easily.
What can we do as teachers?
We can make lessons interesting,
live and fun.

Here
and
now
Interest

Sense
of
humor
Curiosity

Sensory Input: Stimulate

all five senses
H.DouglasBrownrecommends:
Physicalactivities:Roleplay,playgamesand
TotalPhysicalResponseactivities.
Projectwork
Sensoryaids,suchas:smelling,touching...
Audiovisualaids:videos,pictures,tapes,songs,
Mimic:Childrencanlearnbygestures.

Affective factors
Douglas Brown considers children are often
innovative in language forms but still have
lots of inhibitions. Therefore, he recommends:
Help your students to laugh with each other at
various mistkes they make.
Be patient and supportive to build self
esteem. Yet at the same time be firm in your
expectations of students.
Elicit as much oral participation as possible
form students, especially the quieter ones, to
give them plenty of oportunities for practicing.

Affectivity
In any learning situation, where individuals need to interact
with others, there are many social and affective constraints
and pressures that can interfere with effective learning:
A highly succesful business person may be embarrassed at
his/her poor performance in English...
A teenager may be reluctant to speak in a foreign
language in front of his/her classmates.

A shy eight year old may be unable to say

a word for fear of making a mistake in
front of a strict teacher and laughing
classmates.

T.P.R.

Influence of 1st
Language acquisition
process

To learn a language
We listen first

Influence of
Right brain

T.P.R.

By listening
Children give
A physical response

Affectivity:
How you feel is
Very important

Use of
commands

Teachers voice
And gestures
Are key resources.

Web sites
The elephant song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=yihq8BIhL9c

Listening Skill
Listening is a complex ability.
It involves more than just
hearing language. Listening is
the ability to receive, attend
to, interpret and respond
emotionally to verbal
messages.
Jack C Richards.

ListeningSkill
When we listen, we use more than
language, we also use non-verbal clues
like body language, to background
knowledge about the situations, the
speakers, their goals, the topic or activity...
And when we listen, we process language
quickly in real time. This is why listening
can be challenging for learners.
Jack C. Richards

Oral language

Non-verbal
language

Knowledge about
The context

Knowledge
About the speaker

Schemata

ListeningStrategies
Pre-listening
activities:
Pre-teach
vocabulary
Discuss pictures,
photos or
cartoons.
Discuss what
students know
about the topic.

While listening
activities:
Complete a gap
fill.
Answer multiple
choice questions.
Answer true/false
questions.
Take notes.

ListeningStrategies
Post- listenig
activities:
Discuss
interpretations and
opinions.
Link listening with
another skill.
Review pre-listening
vocabulary adn teach
new vocabulary.

Playwiththelanguage
Let the pupils talk to themselves. Make up rhymes,
sing songs, tell stories. Play with the language let
them talk nonsense, experiment with words sounds:
Lets go pets go... Playing with the language in
this way is very common in first language
development and is a very natural stage in the first
stages of foreign language learning too.
Wendy Scott and Lisbeth Ytreberg.

Reading Skill
Knowledge of
the topic
-schema-

knowledge
of the
world

Knowledge
Of the
format

Reading Strategies
Depending on the text we are reading,
we generally use one of these
strategies:
identify the topic
predict and guess
read for general understanding
read for specific information
read for details
interpret or make inferences

Vocabulary Grammar

Social
language

Fluency

SPEAKING
Body
language

Register

ListeningPronuntiation

SpeakingStrategies
Using a mascot: This is a
succesful way to present
language to children:
Teddy, can you swim?
No, I cant, but I can
sing.
Teddy, do you like
carrots?
Ugh, no!
What about bananas?
Yes, I love them.

Speakingstrategies
Role plays:
Beginners of all
ages can start on
role play
dialogues by
learning a simple
one by heart and
then acting it out
on pairs.

Writing Skill
Culture

Intentionality

Schema

Language

Writing Activities
Copying
Matching
Organising and
copying
Dictation
Fill in exercises
Letters
cards

Integratingthe4skills
H. Douglas Borown recommends to follow a whole
language approach. This way, as teachers, we can
integrate the four skills, during the lesson. A lesson
plan, according to this model, should include:
Pre-reading discussion of the topic to activate
schemata.
Listening to a text about the topic
Practice reading strategies: skimming,
scanning, inferring...
Writing about the text.

Constructive and creative

comprehension

Constructive and creative

comprehension

According to Vale and

Feunteun, when children
read or listen to a story,
there are four main types of
mental processes involved:

Constructive and creative

comprehension
Picturing and
imaging. Children
create a mental
picture of what they
are reading or
listening to.
Predicting and
recalling. Children
imagine or predict
what is going to
happen next...

Constructive and creative

comprehension
Identification and
pesonalising.
Children identify with
the characters and
situations in the story
according to their own
personal experiences.
Making value
judgements. Children
apply their own values
to those encontered in
the story.

Pictures and Visual Aids

We live in a world dominated by visual
messages. Young children learn much a
bout the written word long before they have
formal reading and writing activities at
school. Information in the form of words
and pictures clues are displayed in most
public places, in the home, and on
television, and children soon realise that
there is a close association between visual
information and the spoken word.
David Vale and Ann Feunteun.

CommunicativeCompetence

Communicative approach
Classrooms goals
are focused on all
of the components
of communicative
competence:
Grammatical,
functional,
sociolinguistic, and
strategic.

Communicativeapproach
Learnersmustget
involvedintheuseof
authenticand
meaningfullanguage.
Fluencyandaccuracy
arecomplementary.
However,fluencyis
preferred,speciallywith
children.

Communicativeapproach
Thegoalofthe
communicativeclassroomis
thatchildrenusethe
languageinsideandoutside
theclassroom.
Studentsaregiven
opportunitiestounderstand
theirownlearningstylesand
todevelopstrategiesfor
autonomouslearning.

Communicative approach
The role of the
teacher is that of
facilitatior and guide.
Students are
encouraged to
construct meaning
through interaction
with others.

CommunicativeSkills

Task Based Approach

Peter Skehan (Brown, 2000) defines task
as an activity in which
Meaning is primary.
There is some communication problem
to solve.
The task is comparable to real world
activities.
The assessment of the task is in terms
of outcome.

Task Based Approach : Target

Tasks and Pedagogical Tasks
Target tasks:
The learners must
accomplish this
activities beyond
(outside) the
classroom.

Pedagogical
tasks: They are
the nucleous of the
classroom
activities. They
include a series of
techniques that
help learners to
perform the target
task.

ProjectWork
Inprojectwork,children
canlearnbydoingand
researching.
STEPS:
Childrenchooseatopic
ofinterest
Theygatherinformation
aboutthetopic

Inprojectwork,children
canintegratethe4
communicativeskills.
Theylearntowork
collaboratively
Attheendtheyshowa
product.

ProjectWork

Bibliography
Brown, Douglas H. Teaching by Principles.
New York: Longman, 2000.
Reilly, Vanessa & Ward Sheyla M. Very
young learners. New York: Oxford, 2002.
Scott, Wendy A. And Ytreberg, Lisbeth H.
Teaching English to Children. New York:
Longman, 2000.
Vale, David with Feuteun, Anne. Teaching
children English. Melbourne: Cambridge,
1996.