Teaching Young Learners Review
Teaching Young Learners
Annamaria Pinter
Oxford
As someone who teaches just about every type of age and class type, I have noticed over the years that the kind of book I get most out of is very different depending on what kind of English lesson it’s about. With Business English and ESP classes, for example, I don’t really have much time or need for the theory of how to teach this kind of class but instead need stuff that tells me about my students’ area of business and the language they are likely are use day to. With General English one-to-one students, however, finding materials and topics that work is the least of my troubles and books that give me theories on how particular kinds of people learn and are motivated to learn keeps my interest levels up and can help me adapt just about any material for the individual needs of my students. Books about teaching young learners are particularly difficult to choose. I am always very drawn between needing new ideas I can take into class tomorrow to stimulate the kids and me, and being very dissatisfied with the cumulative effect of trying picking up and using a list of ideas I like the look of. This dissatisfaction stems mainly, I believe, from the fact that this doesn’t fundamentally change my classes at all but just gives me some new-looking ideas that fit into the same old class format. So when I do find time to read a book that concentrates more on the theory of teaching young learners I tend to find it a much more stimulating read, if one that takes time to digest and bring into play in my classes.
Although this book specifically says in the introduction that it is “not a resource manual that offers a list of ideas ready to be implemented in the classroom”, with children it is very difficult to divide what games they play etc. while researchers are examining how they learn and what that means is going on in their heads. Quite a lot of practical ideas and teaching advice, therefore, slip through- such as moving from copying to more free writing by getting students to just copy particular words like all the animals words in a story. The meat of this book is, however, summaries of lots of research findings and theories likely to be of interest and use to teachers of 5 to 14 year olds. A lot of the results of the research mentioned in the book merely back up what you have been doing and/ or EFL trainers have been telling you to do for years (e.g. that if the children use the language to really communicate something they learner quicker, at any level) and so therefore just serve to remind you of what you have forgotten or make you feel good that you’ve been doing it all along. Some more surprising results and conclusions (such as the idea that the time that children get a first, vague idea that they can use English in the future starts at 11 or 12) got some question marks in the margin from me and have caused quite a lot of thought since. The very encouraging general impression I have got from reading through his book is that a lot of relevant and interesting research has been done in recent years about precisely the questions that weren’t covered back when I did my initial training, and that there is hope that some of my remaining head-scratchers might be dealt with soon too.
After the Introduction, the book is divided into chapters on “Learning and Development”, “Learning the first language at home and school”, “Learning a second/ third language at home and at school”, “Policy: primary ELT programmes”, “Teaching listening and speaking”, “Teaching reading and writing”, “Teaching vocabulary and grammar”, “Learning to learn”, “Materials evaluation and materials design”, “Assessment”, and “Research in the primary English classroom”. These are followed by an appendix of suggested tasks to explore your own practice (such as trying to use authentic materials in class and reflecting on it), a glossary, a bibliography and an index.
Each unit starts with an introduction, is clearly divided into distinct sections of a page or so in length and ends with a recommended reading list. This format makes the book easy to refer to quickly if you are looking for something specific and makes for a very good structure for a teaching training seminar, series of workshops or whole course. The book is obviously written with the idea of being used as part of a staff training course very much in mind, but that certainly doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good read for the commuter train or bedside. On the contrary, it is written in easily manageable sections and clear and simple to understand language, and does a good job at alternating the obvious and well-known stuff with the more recent and/ or controversial. My only complaint would be that in trying to be all things to all English teachers the book does not go very deeply into any of the points it covers, and could therefore perhaps have merited a “Introduction to…” at the beginning of its title. Obviously there is a lack of space in just 180 pages (with ample use of blank space, example pages from recent textbooks and some illustrations), but perhaps following up just one of the topics in more detail would have been useful in showing how deep and extensive the research out there is. If there was any chapter I would leave out to make way for this, it would probably be the one on “policy”- where a need to cover every Primary age classroom in every country makes it impossible to make any clear statements about any of them. If I ever find the time and money to chase up any of the (very interesting looking) recommended reads in the book that I haven’t read before, though, this complaint of lack of depth too will probably fade away. All in all, if you have read less than 5 books that were published in the last 5 years on teaching English to primary-aged children, this should probably be one of the next ones.
Review originally published in Modern English Teacher magazine. Reprinted with permission.
© Alex Case/ Modern English Publishing