Teaching English in the Primary Classroom

This week, we are listening to our friends’ presentation based on Susan Halliwell’s book. She is not the halliwell’s sisters in Charmed,okay!

Here are the sub-topics of the first chapter.

1.1 Children’s ability to grasp meaning

Children are not born with ‘blank slate’ but they are capable to pick up the ‘meaning’ based on various features such as intonation, gestures,facial expressions etc.

1.2 Children’s creative use of limited language resources

Children will ‘experiment’ the language based on their generalization. Even though ,it is ‘ungrammatically’ correct, but this is a fundamental phenomenon for a language development.

1.3 Children’s capacity for indirect learning

Children can internalize things in their own from their environment. Teacher can creates fun activities such as game or role play to promote learning.

1.4 Children’s instinct for play and fun

Teacher should be creative in exploiting certain activities as children are motivated to learn English in a fun way.

1.5 The role of Imagination

This will be explain in next entry.

1.6 The instinct for interaction and talk.

Children's curiousity can cause annoyance among adults. They keep on talking and asking questions. However, teachers should not stop them from talking because talking can help children to develop the use and the practice part of English language.