Teaching Young Language Learners

Components: Book for teachers
Author: Annamaria Pinter
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Review:
This book, Teaching Young Language Learners, immediately caught my attention as I currently teach pre-school to elementary age beginner level children in Japan. But upon reading the introduction, the author, Annamaria Pinter describes that she intends seasoned teachers with an interest in teaching language to children and teacher trainers to get the most out of her book. I, not being a veteran teacher, was initially disappointed by the author’s intention. To my surprise, after closely reading the book, I found the opposite to be true.

Teaching Young Language Learners is organized into compact chapters ranging from “Learning and Development” to “Materials Evaluation and Materials Design”. Within each chapter are sections in bold efficiently detailing major theories and ideas. Complementing the descriptions, pictures and diagrams help the reader grasp the main idea of each passage. Pinter offers input into why the reading is important to teachers and how they can implement it in their teaching. Near the end of each chapter is a “Recommended Reading” list that furthers the discussion of theory, and Pinter also offers a teacher resource listing that is invaluable. Closing each chapter is a task designed to help the reader immediately initiate putting the reading into practice.

While this handbook is intended for veteran teachers, I believe this could easily be adapted for use as a textbook in university classes or as a handbook for language teachers teaching children for the first time. The knowledge presented in this book should already be quite familiar to a veteran teacher, so I therefore recommend (against the author’s intentions) Teaching Young Language Learners especially to student teachers and beginner teachers.