Teaching English To Young Learners Research Articles

An Exploratory Practice Study on the Impact of the Problem-Based Learning Approach in a TEYL Course on Pre-Service Primary School Teachers

This exploratory practice study explores the impact of problem-based learning (PBL) in a teaching English to young learners (TEYL) course on pre-service primary school teachers at the Higher Institute of Arts and Crafts of Tataouine, Tunisia. A survey was used to collect information about pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards PBL. The findings suggest that the pre-service teachers found PBL to be effective and engaging as an instructional approach in that it helped them develop their critical thinking, team-building skills, and self-directed learning. 

Impact of Evidence-Based Instruction on Teachers’ Views of Teaching and their Learning of TEYL-Related Concepts

This exploratory practice study attempts to investigate the impact of a newly designed TEYL (Teaching English to Young Learners) course on pre-service teachers’ learning at the Institut Supérieur des Arts et Métiers, Tataouine (ISAMT). The study also examined their views of teaching as they will soon graduate and join the teaching profession. Several types of assessment (formative and summative) were designed to diagnose and assess students’ views of teaching and knowledge of TEYL-related concepts before and after the TEYL course. Findings reveal that while students’ understanding of TEYL concepts has improved, their English language proficiency remains a major obstacle to fully benefitting from the course. 

Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) at Elementary School

Teaching young learners is quite challenging and teachers need to be creative. This research aims to investigate the material used in English teaching-learning process for young learners in 5th grade 5A and 5B classes and in 6th grade 6A and 6B classes of an Elementary school of SDN 2 Kekeri in West Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara Province. The subjects of the study were a teacher and her students. To find the data in question research, the research used two types of instruments that are checklist observation and score rubric. The result shows there are four materials that most student teachers used to practice reading, writing, listening, and speaking English through games, worksheets, and role-plays, such as slides, songs, photographs, and drawings. It was found that their average score of 88.25 in 5th grade and an average score of 88.36 in 6th grade. Thus, it can be concluded that their English is in very well category.

Teaching English to Young Learners: Combining Theory and Practice through Practicum in Pre-service Teacher Education

Recent years have witnessed an exponential growth in interest in teaching English to young learners (TEYL) across the world. Pivotally, there is some research focusing on in-class practices and teacher pedagogy on this issue, yet young learner teacher education has not been given much attention. Many teacher education programs in different countries prepare their pre-service teachers for young learners by offering TEYL courses without providing them with real classroom experiences. To this end, the researchers initiated a practicum project in which pre-service EFL teachers taught English to young learners besides taking the TEYL module at the university. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 21 participants, it was aimed to examine the effectiveness of a practicum-integrated TEYL teacher education program. The findings revealed that practicum provided teacher candidates with a range of benefits in terms of putting young learner knowledge into practice, developing teaching skills, designing age-appropriate lessons and materials, and gaining confidence with TEYL. Different from previous practicum-related studies, the current study showed that practicum helped pre-service teachers have clearer minds on their future careers and teaching contexts in that some participants would choose to work with older learners considering the distinctive characteristics of children. This study offers implications for pre-service teachers and teacher education programs for training young learner English teachers more effectively.

Teaching English to Young Learners: Combining Theory and Practice through Practicum in Pre-service Teacher Education

The recent years have witnessed an exponential growth of interest in teaching English to young learners (TEYL) across the world. Pivotally, there exists some research focusing on the in-class practices and teacher pedagogy on this issue, yet young learner teacher education has not been given much attention. Many teacher education programs in different countries prepare their pre-service teachers for young learners through offering TEYL courses without providing them with real classroom experiences. To this end, the researchers initiated a practicum project in which pre-service EFL teachers taught English to young learners besides taking the TEYL module at the university. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 21 participants, it was aimed to examine the effectiveness of practicum-integrated TEYL teacher education program. The findings revealed that practicum provided teacher candidates with a range of benefits in terms of putting young learner knowledge into practice, developing teaching skills, designing age-appropriate lessons and materials, and gaining confidence with TEYL. Different from previous practicum-related studies, the current study showed that practicum helped pre-service teachers to have clearer minds on their future careers and teaching contexts in that some participants would choose to work with older learners considering the distinctive characteristics of children. This study offers implications for pre-service teachers and teacher education programs on training young learner English teachers more effectively.

The Earlier, the Better. Global and Indonesian Views on TEYL (Teaching English to Young Learners)

Teaching English to young learners (TEYL) has been attracting the attention of governments (as policymakers), TEYL practitioners, and students' parents alike. For some, among various issues surrounding TEYL, issues regarding the role of students' first language (L1), language skills to focus on, and when to start to teach English are among the critical issues in TEYL. This qualitative study assesses how academics have measured and conceived teaching English to young learners across 17 empirical studies from global and Indonesian contexts. Its specific goal is to determine what can be drawn from these investigations and what critical issues remain. Results indicate that English to young learners from the global context is divided into two opposing parties (i.e., proponents and opponents of early start). Meanwhile, Indonesian EYL practitioners (i.e., researchers, teachers, schools) and stakeholders (i.e., parents) mostly favor the early start. Yet, current research findings serve to deepen and broaden theoretical understandings of The TEYL and their impact in the particular situation of teaching English to young learners. Future research and practical implications are discussed.

Teaching English to young learners in private sector of Iranian ELT: Challenges and local realities

AbstractThe growing phenomenon of (pre)primary English education worldwide has resulted in the rise in prominence of the discipline of teaching English to young learners (TEYL). Under the global forces and parents' pressure, early EFL learning has also turned into a pervasive trend in the marketized private sector of Iranian ELT as evidenced by the ever‐growing number of classes of ever‐younger learners. However, it is not clear what stands at its core because it has not received the attention it deserves, and reports on its status quo are almost non‐existent. This qualitative study was conducted to shine the spotlight on some local realities and challenges faced by Iranian TEYL to trigger more intensive research and informed discussion into this Cinderella area of scholarship. The findings regarding each aspect are presented and discussed along with implications and directions for future research.

Developing a Model of English Digital Poster Book for Teaching English in Indonesia’s Early Childhood Education

Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) means introducing English as a foreign language in learning to children. Children should learn a foreign language earlier to expand the boundaries of the world and encourage them to face dynamic international development. Nowadays, children are immersed as native digital users more so than generations past. Therefore, this research is a research and development (R&D) that aims to design, develop and validate an English digital poster book Model teaching English in Indonesia’s early childhood education using the ADDIE Models. This model consists of five steps: analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate. The product of this research was developed and then evaluated by four content experts. The result showed that all content experts considered that the final version of an English digital poster book for teaching English in Indonesia’s early childhood education was practical and valid. Based on the observation, most children are excited to use this product in learning English. Teachers also claimed that this product was so interesting, easy to understand, appropriate to the level of difficulty for children in learning English, easy to operate, and can guide them to in teaching English at kindergarten level.

TEYL IN INDONESIAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS: WHY, WHO, WHAT, AND HOW?

English has been eliminated as a compulsory subject in elementary school and replaced with an extracurricular (2013 Curriculum) and elective subject (Merdeka Curriculum). This study is to investigate the Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) in elementary schools. An online survey was randomly distributed and responded by 112 teachers from 74 schools in 13 districts (in 5 provinces in Indonesia). The study's samples included 94 English teachers from 66 schools. The questionnaire was designed by providing both closed-response and open-response questions. The data from closed-ended questions was quantitatively examined to determine percentages and frequencies. The data from open-response questions, on the other hand, were investigated qualitatively through data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification. Despite the pros and cons of the newest curricula, most schools (89% of 74) teach English to students. It was because English is vital for futures; students need to be taught English early; and ensuring that school is not left behind others. Homeroom teachers (61%), specialized English teachers (32%), and English teachers with no relevant educational background (7%) are among those who teach English. The top three teaching topics were vocabulary, grammar, and writing, as stated by 64 teachers (68%), 15 teachers (16%), and 7 teachers (7%), respectively. "Song" was voted 68 times to be used in English class, "Games" was chosen 60 times, "Lecture" was elected 57 times, and "Dialogue/Conversation" received the fewest votes (12 times). TEYL in elementary schools should consider not only the fixed curriculum but also the teachers’ preparedness.

DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ CREATIVITY IN TEACHING TEYL SUBJECT DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the education world, especially teaching and learning. Students must be equipped with four skills to survive in the global competition of the 21st century, namely Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Creativity, and communication (4C). One of the essential skills is creativity. Teachers have to provide learning activities for students to develop their skills. As a result, teachers must adapt to the condition by selecting the appropriate strategies. One of the strategies which can be applied during the pandemic is Project Based Learning. This study aims to describe the process of developing creativity in the students using Project Based Learning in the Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) course and the student's responses towards the strategy applied by the lecturer. This study is qualitative; the data were collected by documentation, observation checklist, and interviews. The subjects are lecturers and students taking TEYL courses for the 2020/2021 academic year. This study found that the lecturer employed blended learning to implement the teaching and learning process. She assigned the students a project: learning activities for young learners in the form of a book chapter. Through creating the project in TEYL courses, the students could develop their creativity, especially in fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration.

The professional identity of Iranian young-learner teachers of English: A narrative inquiry

Drawing on positioning analysis and the concept of master narrative, this narrative inquiry explored seven Iranian English-to-young-learner teachers' professional identities. It was conducted through examining the master narratives on the activity of teaching English to young learners (TEYL) and their impact on teachers' self- and other-positioning within their professional communities. The findings revealed that TEYL is dismissed as an appendix to ELT and oversimplified as the activity of teaching basic language to young learners without due attention to the important educational and pedagogical aspects involved in it. As such, young-learner teachers are treated as second-class citizens due to the dominant master narratives of TEYL being inconsequential and inferior as opposed to adult ELT. This treatment has created a discriminatory division, marginalizing young-learner teachers and challenging novice young-learner teachers' self-positioning as legitimate practitioners, and pushing them to consider for themselves a peripheral position at the margin of ELT. This study found such division to negatively impact young-learner teachers' professional commitment and practice. We discuss implications along with suggestions for further research.

Türkiye'de çocuklara İngilizce öğretimi ile ilgili araştırma makalelerinin içerik analizi

Recently, Turkish education system has been subject to some new regulations which have induced an increase in the number of the studies conducted in the field of Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) in Turkiye. This study mainly aims to determine the frequency distribution of these studies with regard to their topics, publishing years, the number of their authors, their samples and research methods with the help of a document analysis of the articles indexed by ULAKBIM TR Index (National Index) database. 56 articles were chosen as the sample since they were identified to be content-specific in the field of TEYL. Article Information Rubric was chosen as a data collection instrument and the data was processed through Microsoft Excel. The main findings of the study are: (1) ELT researchers are mostly concerned about writing papers about ‘Beliefs and Attitudes’ and ‘Methods and Techniques’; (2) there is an important change in the frequency distribution in terms of publishing years; (3) mostly in-service teachers have been chosen as the sample with purposive sampling method; (4) the studies mostly followed qualitative research with case studies, (5) researchers used interviews and questionnaires most as data collection tools and (6) the most frequently performed type of data analysis is content analysis in these studies. Suggestions for further research were provided at the end of the study.

WHY DO THEMES MATTER? THE TEACHERS’ VOICES ABOUT THEMATIC UNITS FOR TEACHING ENGLISH TO YOUNG LEARNERS

Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) in Indonesia has been an intriguing field that there never been ending studies about it. As a locally-tailored school subject that can be local content or elective subject without curriculum guideline, English for Young Learners (EYL) program is carried out in various ways by the primary schools in Indonesia. This present study aims to discover the essential role of implementing thematic model in TEYL. This paper discusses a phenomenological investigation of five EYL teachers who employ thematic units for teaching the pupils in different cities of Indonesia. Graduated from English education department, all participants have been teaching young learners English more than five years and planning their teaching based on their students’ needs by utilizing themes. Using semi-structured interview questions, the teachers were guided to explain their experience in valuing the themes for teaching English thematically, how to incorporating themes into TEYL, and challenges in implementing EYL thematic units. The data were analyzed thematically to get the emerging themes which correspond to this research topic. The results revealed that teaching English thematically is critical for young learners as their English learning scaffolding to achieve language skills and ability to communicate in particular discourse. All participants agreed that their students enjoyed the EYL thematic activities for gaining new knowledge using English despites challenges faced by the teachers in preparing the lessons.

The Implementation of TEYL in Indonesia Revisited: A Study at Primary Schools in Bandung

This study explored Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) implementation in elementary schools in Bandung, Indonesia. Surveys, interviews, observation, and document analysis were used to obtain data. The survey was distributed to 30 TEYL teachers from 30 schools within the region. Interviews were conducted with four teachers from four different schools. The data were triangulated and descriptively examined to assess TEYL in primary schools. The findings showed a mismatch between the government's policy on English instruction in primary schools and TEYL's implementation. In the 30 schools investigated, English was taught as local content in 21 schools (70%) and extracurricular in 7 schools (23%). Meanwhile, only 2 schools (7%) did not conduct English in their teaching-learning process. Due to the lack of government supervision, teachers are free to construct their own TEYL course content. According to the interviews, adopting TEYL is challenging due to varying teacher abilities and the availability of school’s infrastructure. The discussion suggests some recommendations on how to utilize the TEYL curriculum in Indonesian's primary schools effectively.

Great Assets: Hungarian Children’s Classics in Teaching English to Young Learners

The publication of more and more translations of Hungarian children’s books into English in the past two decades calls for the reconsideration of what children’s literature can be used in the English language classroom. This paper examines two Hungarian children’s books, Veronika Marék’s The Ugly Little Girl and Dóra Igaz’s Pali elkésik / Pali is Late. By exploring the teaching opportunities these books offer in the context of storytelling in TEYL (Teaching English to Young Learners), this paper argues that Hungarian children’s books in English can be used just as well as any authentic (i.e., British-American) books in language teaching. Moreover, the Hungarian culture expressed in the language and content of these books can make primary pupils more motivated and prouder of the Hungarian literary contribution to the international scene.

EFL Teacher’s View on Virtual Based Storytelling in Teaching Vocabulary for Elementary Students

Teaching English to young learners (TEYL) is different from teaching adults. Children need constant attention and assistance as well as motivating methods to keep them engaged particularly during online learning in the pandemic era these days. This study aims to investigate English teacher’s perception on teaching English vocabulary to elementary students’ by using storytelling method in a virtual environment. The study asked the following question: What is the English teacher’s perspective on teaching English using storytelling virtually during the pandemic? The study interviewed an English teacher of a private school in Bekasi, Indonesia using a semi-structured interview guide. The study found that the English teacher agreed that storytelling is beneficial to use in teaching English for young learners. In addition, the teacher mentioned that there were several issues during the online learning such as unenthusiastic students, students’ limited access to the gadgets, and students’ passive involvement during the learning. Further, in terms of teaching with storytelling, the teacher would request the students to make a video and retell stories in the textbook. This study concludes that it is paramount for English teachers to continuously provide varied teaching methods in order to solve problems faced by Indonesian elementary students during online learning.

An Analysis of Theses Written on Teaching English to Young Learners in Turkey

This review study examines all the master’s and doctoral theses completed on teaching English to young learners (TEYL) between the years 2014 and 2020 in Turkey. Eighty theses and dissertations indexed in the Turkish National Theses Database were included in the study. The tendencies in the theses in terms of sub-subjects covered, research designs applied, sampling methods used, research contexts targeted, and overall findings were identified and discussed. This paper provides an account of recent graduate research in TEYL to be a reference for researchers and supervisors in the field by presenting the results of a conceptual and descriptive analysis of the theses. Furthermore, by interpreting the tendencies in research methodology and over/under-studied areas in the field, the study reveals possible gaps and research opportunities in the field of TEYL.

An investigation of quality assurance practices in online English classes for young learners

PurposeThe main purpose of this study was to explore the quality assurance practices in teaching English to young learners (TEYL) settings during the sudden switch to digital education. The investigation of the issue was conducted through triple perspectives including institutional, teacher and learner dimensions.Design/methodology/approachA partially mixed sequential dominant status design (P4) method was adopted in this study. The qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques were incorporated, and the data were triangulated to ensure validity. Additionally, trustworthiness, credibility and transferability procedures were strictly followed for the qualitative data.FindingsThe findings of this study revealed that the investigated institution in this study reacted this process swiftly and made the benefit of young and technology literate teachers while experiencing certain difficulties. On the other hand, teachers were confused in this process, and they showed signs that they were affectively influenced. The most prominent difficulty experienced by the teachers was the integration of four language skills to their teaching and assessment. A small number of the learners in this study revealed that they had negative attitudes toward online education, which was thought to be stemming from the lack of technological equipment and a suitable learning environment.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is one of the first studies to explore quality assurance in TEYL in relation to distance education practices. As a three-dimensional study, the current study explores the issue from triple perspective as institutional, teacher and leaner perspectives.

Teacher Trainees’ Perspectives on Storytelling in Primary EFL Classrooms

The COVID-19 pandemic has obliged EFL teacher trainers to find new pathways to prepare teacher trainees (TTs) for future classrooms. For the TTs enrolled in the Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYLs) course, telling stories effectively is of utmost important. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the TTs’ perspectives on creating and telling storybooks in EFL primary classrooms besides the necessity for being trained to tell stories effectively via their out-of-class video-recorded microteaching sessions. The data were collected via the questionnaire and the focus group interviews. The findings revealed: (1) the TTs approved the necessity of creating and telling stories in primary EFL classrooms, which indicates their developed cognition regarding the pedagogical advantages of telling stories to children; (2) effective and interactive storytelling skills were associated with the story teller’s narration skills, tone of voice, mimicry, gesture, and interaction skills; (3) the TTs were more in favor of the necessity for being trained to tell a story effectively through face-to-face education than through online education despite reporting several pros and cons of both ways; (4) female TTs were more in favour of creating story books and the necessity for being trained to tell a story effectively via face-to-face training.

Microteaching: A Technique to Enhance English-as-a-Foreign Language Teacher Candidates’ Professional Learning

Practicing teaching occupies a vital place in initial teacher training programs, and microteaching technique is implemented in teacher training to create an environment where teacher candidates (TCs) have a chance to transfer accumulated content knowledge into practice. This qualitative case research was undertaken to explore a) English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) teacher candidates’ (EFLTCs) perceptions of the contribution of the microteaching they either conducted or observed in Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYLs) II course to their professional learning, b) to what extent getting feedback on their microteaching from peers reinforces their professional learning, c) their conceptions of the contribution of reflecting on their own microteaching to their professional learning, and d) how they would redesign the way the microteaching process was gone through to better serve EFLTC professional learning. The findings demonstrated microteaching was viewed as effective at enhancing professional learning and the incongruence with respect to their views on the contribution of receiving peer feedback to their professional learning. Additionally, the findings indicated that engaging in self-evaluation prompted EFLTC professional learning and a set of suggestions were put forward to improve microteaching experience for EFLTCs. Even though the effect of microteaching on professional learning was evaluated in the context of initial EFL teacher training and TEYLs II course, the findings of this research could be thought-provoking for teacher educators from diverse disciplines already integrating or intending to integrate microteaching into their teaching.