Teaching English to Pre-School Children and Children in a Primary School

     teaching machines which can be utilized for presenting information to the pupils, for drilling, or testing; the teaching machine can provide an interaction between the pupil and the “programme”; the learner obtains a stimulus and a feed-back from his response; thus, favourable conditions are created for individual pupils to learn, for instance, vocabulary, grammar, reading, etc.;

     a language laboratory, this is a special classroom designed for language learning. It is equipped with individual private or semi-private stalls or booths. They are connected with a network of audio wiring, the nerve centre of which is the monitoring console which has a switch board and tapedecks, making it possible to play tapes and send the programme to all or any combination of booths. The teacher at the monitoring console can listen in, or can have a two-way conversation with any pupil.

     There are two main types of language laboratories - library and broadcast systems. The library system is suitable for students capable of independent study; each student selects his own material and uses it as he wishes. The broadcast system is suitable for classwork when the same material is presented at the same time to a whole group of students, and a class works together under a teacher's direction.

     The language laboratory is used for listening and speaking. The pupil’s participation may be imitation or response to cues according to a model. The language laboratory is used for “structural drills” which usually involve rephrasing sentences according to a model, or effecting substitutions. The language laboratory is often used for exercises and tests in oral comprehension.

     Tape recorders fulfill all the functions required for this use of the language laboratory. Tape programmes can be associated with visual aids for individual work or work in pairs. The language laboratory keeps a full class of pupils working and learning for the entire period, and thus enables the teacher   to   teach   the foreign   language more effectively.

     In conclusion, it must be said that the use of teaching aids is very demanding on the teacher. He must know about each aid described above, be able to operate it, and train pupils to use it. He should also know what preparations must be made for classroom use of each of these teaching aids, and what teaching materials he has at his disposal.

     In teaching foreign languages in our secondary schools most of the teaching aids are available. Each school should be equipped with a filmstrip projector, a film projector, an opaque projector, a tape recorder and a phonograph. Specialized schools, where English is taught nine years, should have language laboratories.

     When used in different combinations teaching aids can offer valuable help to the teacher of a foreign language in making the learning of this subject in schools more effective for pupils. 
 
 
 

TEACHING MATERIALS. 

     By teaching materials we mean the materials which the teacher can use to help pupils learn a foreign language through visual or audio perception. They must be capable of contributing to the achievement of the practical, cultural, and educational aims of learning a foreign language. Since pupils learn a foreign language for several years, it is necessary for the teacher to have a wide variety of materials which make it possible to progress with an increasing sophistication to match the pupils’ continually growing command of the foreign language. Good teaching materials will help greatly to reinforce the pupils’ initial desire to learn the language and to sustain their enthusiasm throughout the course.

     The following teaching materials are in use nowadays: teacher’s books, pupil’s books, visual materials, audio materials, and audio-visual materials.

     A teacher’s book must be comprehensive enough to be a help to the teacher. This book should provide all the recorded material; summaries of the aims and new teaching points of each lesson; a summary of all audio and visual materials required; suggestions for the conduct of the lesson and examples of how the teaching points can be developed.

     Pupil's books must include textbooks, manuals, supplementary readers,   dictionaries,   programmed  materials.

     Textbooks. The textbook is one of the most important sources for obtaining, knowledge. It contains the material at which pupils work both during class-periods under the teacher's supervision and at home independently. The textbook also determines the ways and the techniques pupils should use in learning the material to be able to apply it when hearing, speaking, reading, and writing.

     The modern textbooks for teaching a foreign language should meet the following requirements:

     1. The textbooks should provide pupils with the knowledge of the language sufficient for developing language skills, i. e., they must include the fundamentals of the target language.

     2. They should ensure pupils’ activity in speaking, reading, and writing, i.e., they must correspond to the aims of foreign language teaching in school.

     3. The textbooks must extend pupils’ educational horizon, i. e., the material of the textbooks should be of educational value.

     4. The textbooks must arouse pupils’, interest and excite their curiosity.

     5. They should have illustrations to help pupils in comprehension and in speaking.

     6. The textbooks must reflect the life and culture of the people whose language pupils study.

     Each textbook consists of lessons or units, the amount of the material being determined by the stage of instruction, and the material itself.

     The lessons may be of different structure. In all cases, however, they should assist pupils in making progress in speaking, reading, and writing.

     The structure of the textbook for beginners should reflect the approach in developing pupils' language skills. If there is an oral introductory course, the textbook should include a lot of pictures for the development of hearing and speaking skills. Thus the textbook begins with “picture lessons”. See, for example, Fifth Form English by A. P. Starkov and R.   R.   Dixon.

     If pupils are to be taught all language skills simultaneously, the textbook should include lessons which contain the material for the development of speaking, reading, and writing from the very beginning. See, for example, English 5 by S. Folomkina and E. Kaar.

The textbook should have a table of contents in which the material is given according to the school terms.

     At the end of the book there should be two word-lists: English-Russian and Russian-English, which include the words of the previous year and the new words with the index of the lesson where they first occur.

     Every textbook for learning a foreign language should contain exercises and texts.

     Exercises of the textbook may be subdivided: (1) according to the activity they require on the part of the learners (drill and speech); (2) according to the place they are performed at (class exercises and home exercises); (3) according to the form (whether they are oral or written).

     Exercises for developing pronunciation should help pupils to acquire correct pronunciation habits. Special exercises should be provided for the purpose, among them those designed for developing pupils’ skills in discriminating sounds, stress, or melody. It is necessary that records and tape-recordings should be applied, and they should form an inseparable part of the textbook.

     Exercises for assimilating vocabulary should help pupils to acquire habits and skills in using the words when speaking and writing, and recognizing them when hearing and reading.

Most of the exercises should be communicative by nature:

     - they should remind us of natural conversation: questions, statements, exclamatory sentences, etc.;

     - they   should  be  somehow  logically  connected  with pupils’   activity;

     - they should reflect pupils’ environment;

      - they should stimulate pupils to use the given words. 
The textbooks should provide the revision of words in texts, drill and speech exercises.

     Grammar exercises should develop pupils’ habits and skills in using the grammar items to be learnt in speaking, reading, and writing. The teaching of grammar may largely be carried on through sentence patterns, phrase patterns, words as a pattern, and the ample use of these patterns in various oral and written exercises. Grammar, therefore, must be divided into small fragments, each taught in response to an immediate need “... It is not the grammar of English that is so difficult: it is English usage.” Therefore grammar exercises must be suggested in connection with situations and remind us of the real usage of grammar forms and structures in the act of communication.

     Exercises for developing oral language should constitute 40—50% of the exercises of the textbook. The other 50% will be those designed for assimilating vocabulary, grammar, the technique of reading, etc.

     In all stages of teaching exercises for developing oral language should prepare pupils to carry on a conversation within the material assimilated. This is possible provided pupils are taught to use the words and the sentence patterns they learn in various combinations depending on the situations offered, on the necessity to express their own thoughts and not to learn (to memorize) the texts arranged in topics, which is often the case in school teaching practice.

     Exercises designed for developing oral language should prepare pupils:

     - to use a foreign language at the lessons for classroom needs;

     - to talk about the subjects within pupils’ interests, and about the objects surrounding them;

     - to discuss what they have read and heard.

     The textbook should provide pupils with exercises for developing both forms of speech - dialogue and monologue. As far as dialogue is concerned pupils should have exercises which require: (1) learning a pattern dialogue; the pattern dialogues should be short enough for pupils to memorize them as a pattern, and they must be different in structure: question - response; question - question; statement - question; statement - statement; (2) substitutions within the pattern dialogue; (3) making up dialogues of their own (various   situational   pictures may be helpful).

     As to monologue pupils should have exercises which help them: (1) to make statements, different in structure (statement level); (2) to express their thoughts or to speak about an object, a subject, using different sentence patterns, combining them in a logical sequence (utterance level); (3) to speak on the object, subject, film, filmstrip, story read or heard, situations offered (discourse level). The textbook should include exercises which prepare pupils for reciting the texts, making oral reproductions, etc.

     Exercises for developing reading should help pupils to acquire all the skills necessary to read and understand a text. Therefore, there should be graphemic-phonemic, structural information, and semantic-communicative exercises, the amount of each group being different depending on the stage of   teaching.

     Exercises for writing should develop pupils' skills in penmanship, spelling, and composition.

     Texts in the textbook should vary both in form and in content. Pupils need topical and descriptive texts, stories and poems, short dialogues, and jokes.

     Texts should deal with the life of our people and the people whose language the pupils study.

     It should be noted that a great deal of work has been lone in the field of the textbooks. As a result new textbooks lave appeared in English, German, and French. There is no doubt that these books are better than those formerly used.

     The modern textbooks which are now in use in ten-year schools meet most of the requirements given above.

     Manuals. The manual is a handbook which may be used in addition to the textbook, for example, English Grammar for Secondary School by E. P. Shubin and V. V. Sitel, in which pupils can find useful information about various items of English grammar described in a traditional way.

     Selected readings. There is a great variety of supplementary readers graded in forms and types of schools. For example, Stuart Little by E. B. White; English Readers for the 6th and for the 7^th forms;,Our Animal Friends (for the 7^th form).

     Dictionaries. For learning English there are some English-Russian dictionaries available, for instance, the Learner's English-Russian Dictionary, compiled by S. K. Folomkina and H. M. Weiser (M., 1962); Англо-русский словарь. Сост. В. Д. Аракин, 3. С. Выгодская, Н. Н. Ильина (М., 1971).

     The pupil needs a dictionary to read a text which contains unfamiliar words.

     Programmed materials. They are necessary when programmed learning is used.

     The main features of programmed learning are as follows:

     1. Learning by small easy steps. Every step or frame calls for an oral response which requires both attention and thought.

     2. Immediate reinforcement by supplying a correct answer after each response. The pupil is aware that his responsible is right. The steps are so small and their arrangement is so orderly that he is likely to make very few errors. When an error occurs, he discovers his mistake immediately by comparing his response with the one given in “the feed-back”.

     3. Progression at the learning rate of each individual pupil. Each pupil can work at his own pace.

     Programmed learning creates a new individualized relationship between the learner and his task. He learns for himself and the programme teaches him. Programming is concerned with effective teaching since it is aimed, as carefully as possible, at a particular group of pupils and leads them through a number of steps toward mastering a carefully though-out and circumscribed teaching point. Programming allows the teacher to improve the effectiveness of teaching by constructing materials which will guide the pupil through a series of steps towards the mastery of a learning problem. These steps should be of appropriate size and require the pupil’s active cooperation; he may be asked to answer a question, to fill in a blank, to read, etc. It is very important to grade progress of steps throughout the programme so carefully that each pupil gets every step right.

     Media of programmed instruction are programmed lessons or textbooks and teaching machines machines.

     There are at least two types of programmes: linear and branching. In a linear programme the information is followed by a practice problem which usually requires the completion of a given sentence. The pupil can compare his answer with the given in the clue on the right one frame below. All pupils should progress from frame to frame through the programme. There are few types of programmes of linear programming: programme of comparatives, practice programme, vocabulary programme, situation programme, textual programme.

       In these sample programmes the materials are constructed according to a predetermined plan. Each programme has a precise objective. For instance, “Programme on comparatives” teaches the pattern “X is something -er than Y”. In the last frame the learner is asked to make a statement of comparison unaided by the wording of the frame.

     Every frame contains a blank for the pupil to respond to. The correct response is supplied one step below on the right or under the frame so that the learner receives immediate confirmation of his responses. As the steps are small and an unlimited number of repetitions are possible weak pupils are not discouraged. Such programmed materials may be presented as textual frames in the book and in combination with the tape recorder.

     In a branching programme the information is followed by a multiple-choice question and the learner’s answer to this determines the material he sees next. If he selects the right answer he will be presented with a new unit of information. If he selects a wrong answer he is told he is wrong and the likely nature of his mistake. The student is either directed back to the original frame to make another attempt at the question or he is directed to a remedial sequence before being returned to the original frame.

     An able pupil who will see only frame will progress through the material far more quickly than a pupil who has to go through the remedial frames. Thus the time that a pupil spends on a branching programme will depend not only on the speed with which he deals with each of the frames but also on the amount of information he has to deal with in  any  remedial   frames.

     Programmed foreign language instruction properly utilized is a useful medium which allows the teacher to individualize his pupils’ work at the foreign language and create favourable conditions for language learning.

     Visual materials.

     Objects. There are a lot of things in the classroom such as pens and pencils of different sizes and colours, books, desks and many other articles which the teacher can use in presenting English names for them and in stimulating pupils' activities to utilize the words denoting objects they can see, touch, point to, give, take, etc. Toys and puppets may be widely used in teaching children of primary schools, which is the case in the specialized schools.

     Flashcards. A flashcard is a card with a letter, a sound symbol or a word to be used for quick showing to pupils and in this way for developing pupils’ skills in reading and pronunciation.  Flashcards are usually made by   the   teacher or by the pupils under the teacher's direction, though there are some ready-made flashcards.

     Sentence cards. They bear sentences or sentence patterns which can be used with different aims, e. g., for reading and analyzing the sentences, for using these sentences in speaking, for compiling an oral composition using the sentence as a starting point, for writing a composition.

     These cards are prepared by the teacher and distributed among the pupils for individual work during the lesson. The teacher checks his pupils’ work afterwards.

     Wall-charts. A wall-chart is a big sheet of paper with drawings or words to be hung in the classroom and used for revision or generalization of some linguistic phenomenon. Such as “English Tenses”, “Passive Voice”, “Ing-Forms”, “Rules   of   Reading”.

For example: The letter С

       [к]     [s]

       cat   pencil

     music   face

     Though there are printed wall-charts, the teacher should prepare his own wall-charts because he needs more than he can get for his work.

     Posters or series of illustrations portraying a story. They are used as “props” in retelling a story read or heard. The teacher himself, or a pupil who can draw or paint, prepares such   posters.

     Pictures. There are at least three types of pictures which are used in teaching a foreign language: object pictures (e. g., the picture of a bed), situational pictures (e. g., the picture of a boy lying in bed), topical pictures (e. g., the picture of a bedroom). They may be big enough to be hung in the classroom or small to be distributed among the pupils for each one to speak on his own. Pictures may be utilized separately (as single units) and in sets to be used as “props” for oral composition or re-telling a story. For example, there is a set of pictures by M. S. Kaplunovsky which can be used for creating vivid situations on a flannelboard.