ESSAY CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG LEARNERS

CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG LEARNERS

Young learners are children from the first year formal schooling (5 or 6 years old) to eleven or twelve years old. Young learners have own special characteristic that different with adult learners. The differences should be known and understood by the teacher to improve their quality of teaching and learning process. The teacher needs to know how to give explanation to them because they don’t like long explanation. Young learners have their own world, so the parents and the teacher should be understood what they wants. Basically young learners and adult learners have different characteristics from physical, social and psychological side.

Based on the physical side, young learners more active than adult. They do physical activity in many ways like writing, drawing, coloring, dancing and many more. Because they are very active, the teacher should be try to ask them to play games or role play dialogues with others. Young learners understanding the teacher’s explanation from hands, eyes, and ears. They will understand if the teacher using gesture to explain. Young learners at the developing stage, so they should be get knowledge about everything as much as possible. Not only the teacher that have to teach them, but also their parents. Beside that they are capable of attaining native of foreign language.

Young learners are happy playing and working with their friends. They are aware of themselve in relation to others. It means that they like playing in the company. The parents and the teachers should be using activities that require group play, such as games and dramatizations, but respect the child’s desire to work alone occasionally. Praise him or her for positive behavior such as taking turns and sharing. The teacher will be better to give the children responsibilities and tasks that they can carry out, and then praise efforts and accomplishments.

There are many characteristics of young learners based on the psychological side. The first is young learners have short concentration span, so teachers should be give varied activities as handwriting , songs , games etc. They also get bored easily. To make them enjoy the lesson of course is not easy, teachers can use interesting ways. By using interesting technique children are expected not under pressure. Besides that, they are imaginative. It’s important to Use video or pictures to teach new vocabulary related to concrete meanings. They are less shy than older learners. And then they enjoy imitating and skilfull in listening accurately and mimicking what they have heard. They respond well to rewards from the teacher.  Children get bored easily. Children have no choice to attend school. The lack of the choice means that class activities need to be fun interesting and exciting as possible by setting up the interesting activities.

In conclussion, young learners are children who still in the first schooling, so teaching English to young learners at elementary school is different from that to adults. The English teachers to young learners in elementary school should be know the characteristics of young learners. The characteristics consist of physical side, social side and psychological side. The English teachers at elementary schools should have other skill. The teachers of English to young learners should be able to sing songs, tell stories, and organize worksheet so that the classroom atmosphere seems interesting. According to John and Morrow (1983: 60-64) to make situation of the teaching of English to young learners communicative, the English teachers should comprehend the communicative principl as follows:

a. Know what you are doing.

b. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.

c. The processes are as important as the forms.

d. To learn it, do it.

e. Mistakes are not always a mistake.

References:

Morrow, K. 1983. “Principles of Communication Methodology”. In Johnson, K. And Morrow, K. Communication in the Classroom: Application and Methods for A Communicative Approach. Longman House, Burnt Mill, Harlow, Essex CM20 2JE, England: Longman Group Limited.

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