V. LISTENING, ORAL WORK, READING AND WRITING

What are our challenges when teaching the listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills?

There are some many challenges that we have to face when we are teaching the listening, reading, writing and speaking skills in English to very young learners. Teaching children who speak little or no English at all provides its own set of challenges; the main challenge for teachers is to encourage students to understand English as a source of communication within particular social and cultural contexts.

One of the challenges is that children are more energetic, have shorter attention spans, and they learn language according to specific stages of development; this challenge is one of the most important things that we have to take into account to ease students learning. Another challenge is that children learn the first language acquiring it through experience while the second language usually comes with formal teaching and this can result boring to children.

Listening challenge

The challenge that we face teaching the listening skill was that our little students didn't understand what we were saying in English. We had to look for the activities most appropriated for their understanding and also we use the simplest language possible.

The ideas that helped us to teach the listening skills are:

· We can tell stories to children, adapt our vocabulary to children levels, re-tell the story many time required for the children understanding.

· Listen and do this is a good activity because we have the opportunity to know children have understood the lesson or not

· Listen and color we can easily do this activity because we can use any picture which students have in their workbook.

· Listen and repeat in this activity we can say a word and children repeated the word.

Oral work challenges

The big challenges that we face when we though the oral work was the as all we knows English is not our first language, so it is hard to pronounce and ever harder for children who are developing their first language.

The ideas that helped us to teach the oral work skills are:

· Using a mascot like a teddy what we can do it is to have a conversation with the teddy and get the students familiar with the teddy.

· Use flashcards to introduce new vocabulary and we can ask the students about what they see on the picture.

· Chain work in this activity what we can do is put cards face down in pile and a student picks up a card and say something about the picture.

Reading challenges

The challenge that we face when we tough the reading skill was that not all our little student could not read in their mother tongue and some of them were in the process of learning how to read in Spanish. They could get easily confuse learning how to read in English at the same time in Spanish.

The ideas that helped us to teach the reading skills are:

· The phonics activity is good idea it is based on letters and sounds. We teach the pupils the letters of the alphabet and the combination of letters to forms words.

· Read books to students and point to the words so they can see what you are reading, they can understand the connection between the spoken and written words.

· Reading stories based on the child’s language you can ask the students to help you to created the story and then ask them to read it. They will remember what they say and read it.

· Nursery rhymes or songs are good activities; they can read what they already know off by heart.

· One of the most important things that we have to do is “Look and Say” because in that way we are not only teaching reading but we are teaching pronunciation.

Writing Challenges

Teaching the writing skills to very young learners tends to be difficult. At this age, they are in the process of learning how to write. But you can use many techniques to let them feel comfortable when they are writing, and that helps them to consolidate their learning.

The ideas that helped us to teach the writing skills are:

· Matching is a good idea because children can match a drawing with a word.

· Fill in the exercise in this activity the students can add the missing world to the sentence but this activity could result difficult for young learners.

The activities that we featured in classes are:

Listen activities

· Telling story in this activity we told our students a common tale in English that they already knew in Spanish. This activity did work because they heard the words and they learn how to say some word of the tale.

· Drawing in this activity we said a word to the students and they drew what they heard. This activity is good to check if they have learnt the words.

· Listen and color this activity is similar to drawing but in this activity what they did was heard a color and they had to color the page with the drawing.

· Listen and repeat the activity this was the most common activity that we did because it helped us to introduce new words to children also they learned how to pronounce and say it. Our students learned many words with this activity.

Oral work activities

· Drawing with showed a picture to the students and they described what they saw.

· Using a mascot what we did was telling a tale using the mascot as narrator.

· Listen and repeat we used this activity a lot because is very effective in children learning.

· Chain work in this activity the students selected a cards and after that they talked about what they saw.

Reading activities

· Reading a story from book in this activity we read to our students common tales and we pointed to each word and we said at the same time with the purpose that they related the sound or the word with the words that they sow in the book.

· Reading text based on the child’s language in this activity we asked our students to help us to create a story and we translated into English. The idea was that children heard what they want in English with this activity they learned many words.

· Reading familiar nursery rhymes or songs what we did in this activity was told a rhyme which they learned by heart; we gave them a page in which was the rhyme and they simulate that they were reading. We did the same with songs.

Writing activities

· Matching what we did in this activity was to give the students a page which had fruits and their names and the students matched it.

We did not do a lot of activities in writing because our students were in the process of learning how to write.

The activities that we did not try in our classes


Activities that may work

· Mime story in this activity we could tell any story to children and do mimes with them. This activity could result funny for children.

· Listen and do this activity is a very interesting and enjoyable one. What we could do is to say something and the students have to do what they hear.

· Matching this activity could work for children because is easy to do it e.g. they can match a fruit with a color.

Activities that may not work

· Listen for the mistake this activity could result difficult because children could not understand well what we say hence they will not do well the activity.

· Silent reading this activity could be difficult to perform by children because they cannot stay in silent for a long time specially kindergarten children.

· Role plays this activity is too complex to kindergarten children because they do not have the vocabulary to perform the activity.

· Telling the time children could not do this activity because they do not know how to tell the time in their first language.