24.2.10

How to teach English to Children

note: sebelum baca ini harap dimaklumi kalo ada beberapa (atau mungkin banyak) grammar yang salah..hehhehee...artikel ini ditolak ketika saya ikutkan ke salah satu "job" di microworkers....
maklum aja, yang nulis (a.k.a SAYA) cuma seneng banget ama bahasa Inggris dan anak-anak, jadi yo taraf penguasaan grammarnya baru sebatas penguasaan grammar anak-anak kaleee...
anyway, I hope it can give something to you who read it...
happy reading....

We all know that English has become a universal language. Many countries have used English as their second languages, where some others use it as a foreign language. In Indonesia, English has become a popular language and children were been taught in English at their school.
Teaching English to children is not an easy job, but it also not difficult, if we already know how to do it. Below are several things you may consider if you want to teach English to children.

1. Know your student
First thing to do before you teach is to know your student. Different child has different character. Teaching a 3 years old child will be different with teaching a 5 years old child. The younger a child, the shorter length of attention span he/she has. If you teach 3 years old children, you have to be aware that they cannot concentrate or sit still more than 10 minutes. That’s why you have to prepare many activities and it should be interesting for them.

2. No translation
There is tendency for us to translate a word or even a sentence to our students. Especially after we spoke several sentences and we saw many confused faces in front of us. Well, frankly speaking, translation is not a good method to teach a language. Once we do translation, they will think that they don’t have to try to understand the language and they will just wait because they know that we will translate it anyway.

3. Use a lot of gesture or picture
Instead of translation, it is better for us to use gesture or picture to explain. For example, if we want to ask our students to sit, we can say “Please, sit down” and act it out.

4. Being cheerful
Cheerfulness is one important thing we need to show to our students. Believe it or not, the positive energy from our cheerfulness will be transferred to our students.

5. Persevere
Never give up. That’s the key. Always try and look for different methods or way of teaching to help your students to be able to speak in English. Children have different way of learning and we need to try as many methods as we can. One size doesn’t fit to all.

So, anybody interested to teach English to children?

17 comments:

  1. It is a important tips. I like #2. My teacher often translate to Indonesian after spoke even thought the students didn't request it. Hmmm... I hope she/he can ignore it.

    Salam kenal :D

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  2. @kharis: Thank you. I'm glad if it's an important tips. You can ask your teacher to read it then...hehehe... salam kenal juga...

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  3. and the dictionary too..maybe they need it..
    cheers

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  4. @berita untuk negeri: hehehehe...or should I translate this article too??? *LOL*

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  5. i like no. 4 !
    why was this nice article rejected ?

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  6. @Hendri : thank you...they said there are too many grammatical mistakes...hehehehehe....

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  7. Anonymous31.3.10

    may be.it will be fun..
    i like the tips that said we should to being cheerful..
    because they always to smile..

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  8. Anonymous13.5.10

    you got you pay for no much more

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  9. nice tips.
    i'm not good in teaching english to children, i hope it will help.
    thanks.

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  10. can't agree more...it's harder though to work without translation in the non speaking english . the environment. I have student asking me why I don't translate, because the other would..But i will stick and fight for this method :) cause I know it's working well :))))

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  11. nice to read your tips...even though it still depend on the children respons, rather difficult to not translate ...but good enough way to push them..

    eka, we have the same perception of children and teaching also background of education...hehehe, bisa sama seleranya neeh....akyuu arsitek yg kesasar.

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  12. yanie9.10.11

    thanks a lot for your tip. actually i know the method in teaching English for kids since the first i took the English major. but in a fact it's hard to apply it when we are teaching . especially for being cheerful with a big problem inside .anyway keep trying to do better and better .

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  13. Anonymous9.12.11

    nice article. Anyway, if you are an English teacher who teaches children, then you should take an intensive English course. The teacher is the model in the classroom and children will imitate her/him. So it's necessary for the teacher to minimize errors.

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  14. @Anonim: well..this post was made on 2010 and now I've took a master degree in teaching (and English, of course)... :D...So, hopefully I've minimized my errors ... :p

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  15. Being a teacher is easy but being a good characteristic/example is more difficult to do rather than we say in words/sentence because students usually imitate our behavior when teach them,

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  16. Anonymous24.5.12

    I can't imagine any worse thing than teaching english to the Kids. They need special teacher, special lesson and special method. It's a big deal. anyway, thanks for the article dude ;)

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  17. wow...nice posting...I really like it.. keep on posting...salam kenal ya

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yang mau komen, monggo, silahkan....tidak dipungut bayaran