English as a Foreign Language to Young Learners: An Overview
Introduction
For the purposes of the current research, animated stories and songs were used as a basis for designing English lessons for young learners. Would you like animated stories and songs to be integrated into the syllabus of the English language course you will attend in the future.
Theoretical Approaches to Second Language Learning for Young Learners
Characteristics of Young Learners
- Teaching Listening to Young EFL Learners
- Teaching Speaking to Young EFL Learners
- Teaching Vocabulary to Young EFL Learners
By using the term Young Learners (YL) in this dissertation, a reference is being made to primary school students, covering ages five or six to eleven or twelve (Philips, 1993). Furthermore, another significant point to consider is the fact that teachers should by all means help young learners to expand their vocabulary in the target language beyond the textbook used in the classroom (Cameron, 2001) .
Conclusion
Motivating Young EFL Learners to Develop Oracy Skills through Audiovisual Materi-
- Introduction
- Defining Motivation
- Types of Motivation
- Motivational Strategies for Young EFL Learners
- The Use of Technology and Audiovisual Material in ELT for Young Learners
- The Use of Animations and Cartoons in Teaching English to Young Learners
- The Use of Songs and Chants in Teaching English to Young Learners
- Conclusion
In addition, another motivational strategy should be mentioned, which suggests the use of introductory words in the classroom. They are also considered a cognitive resource that can help students develop better concentration, memory and coordination in class (Brewster et al., 2003).
Methodology
- Introduction
- Research Rationale: Purpose of the Research and the Research Questions
- Expected Outcomes of the Research
- The Teaching Context
- Study Participants
- The Setting of the Research
- Implementation of the Selected Material
- Research Design: Qualitative Methods
- Data Collection Tools
- Interviews
- Observation Checklists
- The Teaching Procedure
- Conclusion
As the participants represent a small group of a private tutoring class, the research was conducted at the home of their tutors after the lifting of restrictions due to the Covid-19 lockdown. The reason for conducting the interviews in this way is that the researcher wanted to compare the answers of the participants before and after the completion of the investigation. However, the interview samples attached to this study were translated into English for the purposes of this research.
This section provides a description of the lessons created for the purposes of this study, but focuses on four of them. More specifically, two of the lessons presented in this section are based on two episodes of this television show. The main purpose of the prediction phase was to create warm-up conditions and at the same time activate students' basic knowledge and related schemas.
Using this technique, young students were allowed to visually predict or reconstruct what had happened in that part of the sequence. This chapter clearly presented the rationale of the study and the educational context, followed by a description of the implemented research design and the research instruments (interviews and observation checklists) used to collect data from the participants involved.
- Introduction
- The Findings of the Interviews
- The Findings of the Pre-viewing Interviews
- The Findings of the Post-viewing Interviews
- The Findings of the Observation Checklists
- Conclusion
Most of the time, both students have difficulty listening and pronouncing some words. In general, both students seemed to understand the overall content of the story or song they heard in the majority of the research teaching sessions (see APPENDIX II). This chapter presented and analyzed the results of the qualitative methods used for the purpose of this research.
The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the findings of the current research and relate them to the research questions. On the contrary, their interest remained undiminished until the end of the research-pedagogical hours. The last chapter focused on evaluating the findings of the current research and relating them to the research questions.
Would you like to have animated stories and songs integrated into the curriculum of the English language course that your child will attend in the future. Then the students are asked to put the pictures in the correct order according to the plot of the story.
Introduction
Connecting the Findings to the Research Questions
- Does the Use of Animated Stories and Songs Increase Young EFL Learners’ Motivation to
- To What Extent Can the Use of Animated Stories and Songs Improve Oracy Skills?
- Do Animated Stories and Songs Contribute to Vocabulary Uptake for Young Learners?
- Can Young Learners Improve their Speaking Fluency when Viewing Animated Stories and
Finally, some suggestions for further research are provided regarding the use of animated stories and songs in the Greek EFL context. First, through teacher-designed lessons, students had the opportunity to further practice their listening and speaking skills by watching animated stories and songs. Overall, using cartoons and songs in the classroom has proven to be useful teaching material as it makes it easier for students to remember the language spoken by cartoon characters (Nhung & Dieu, 2020).
As a result, watching cartoons and songs enables YL to improve their listening and speaking skills to a great extent (Kirgoz, 2011). Although the results of this research appear to be positive in terms of improving YLs' word skills, it is worth mentioning that there is limited empirical evidence on the impact of cartoons and songs on YLs' listening and talk. skills (Nhung & Dieu, 2020). As already mentioned, animated stories and songs form an invaluable teaching material, contributing significantly to vocabulary intake through the combination of watching and listening.
Taking into account the findings of several studies on the use of animated stories and songs in ELT for YL, it was found that cartoons and songs had a positive influence on students' vocabulary learning (Karakas & Saricoban, 2012) and on the expansion of the vocabulary. and increasing vocabulary knowledge by viewing them in the EFL classroom (Kayaoglu et al., 2011). Although the findings of this study are generally positive regarding the contribution of animated stories and songs to vocabulary acquisition for YL, it is worth mentioning at this point that a small number of case studies have shown that popular cartoons such as Peppa Pig ( Alexiou, 2015; .Prosic-Santovac, 2016; Alexiou & Kokla, 2019), Charlie & Lola (Alexiou & Yfouli, 2019), Ben & Holly, Caillou (Kostopoulou, 2015) provide abundant vocabulary input for effective and memorable learning of vocabulary at a young age (Alexiou, 2021).
Practical Implications
However, due to the limited number of lessons taught in this study, both participants failed to develop sufficient fluency throughout the teaching sessions. This can be implemented either by designing cartoon teaching in English according to the students' language competence level and age, or by integrating this kind of teaching material into the traditional English lessons by making the necessary changes.
Limitations of the Research
Suggestions for Further Investigation
However, ear training in basic EFL classrooms can also have effects on the other skills (Guillen, 2014), because, as Linse (2005) emphasizes, listening and speaking skills are considered the basis for reading and writing. Therefore, based on this assumption, it is also suggested that similar research should be conducted by all means to investigate the effects of cartoons and songs on young EFL learners' reading and writing skills.
Conclusion
Using Songs, Rhymes and Games in Teaching English to Young Learners in Bangladesh', Journal of Linguistics University of Dhaka. Musical activities for young EFL learners, The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. 11, retrieved from http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Cakir-MusicalActivities.html. 2006), "Using video as audio-visual material in the foreign language teaching classroom". Practical Aspects of Using Video in the Foreign Language Classroom, The Internet TESL Journal, Vol.
The Effect of Viewing Subtitled Animated Cartoons on ELT Students' Incidental Vocabulary Learning, The Journal of Teaching English with Technology. Vocabulary in Greek Young Learners' English as a foreign language textbooks.' The Language Learning Journal. Popular video cartoons and related branded toys in teaching English to very young learners: A case study, Language Teaching Research.
Reasons for using songs in the ESL/EFL classroom', The Internet TESL Journal, 7(2), at http://iteslj.org/Articles/Schoepp-Songs.html. Exploring the value of animated stories with young English language learners', The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 13(4).
The Interview Guides
Do you want your child to learn English through new technologies, cartoons and songs.
Observation Checklists
Attitude towards the lesson and the animated story/song Shows pleasure-enjoyment towards the cartoons/songs.
Task sheets
Listen to the song and fill in the blanks with the words from the box below. ducks, turkeys, goats, cows, chickens, horses, pigs, sheep, mice Farm animals. https://supersimple.com/song/animals-on-the-farm/). One student describes a farm animal and the other tries to guess what animal it is. One student describes a farm animal and the other tries to draw it on a piece of paper or on the board.
First fill in the gaps with the words from the box below and then sing along and “dance” like the animals do. stomping, jumping, swinging, monkeys, snakes, elephants, swimming, waddling, polar bears, kangaroos, penguins, dancing, sliding, animals. Let's go to the zoo. https://supersimple.com/song/lets-go-to-the-zoo/) Let's go to the zoo. One student must choose a wild animal from the previously heard song and write its name on a piece of paper without showing it.
Choose a zoo animal from the picture above, draw it on a piece of paper and display it in class.
Lesson Plans
Freeze frame 2:46 Ls are asked to describe the scene and the food on the table by eliciting the words: salad, pizza, orange juice. Freeze frame 2:09 Ls are asked to describe the scene by eliciting the words: smoothies, fruit drink, delicious. Freeze frame 4:26 Ls are asked to describe the scene and say the fruit used in George's juice.
Ls are asked to fill in the gaps from 1 to 2 and describe the scenes. Freeze frame 1:10 Ls are asked to fill in the gaps from 3 to 4 and describe the scenes. Freeze frame 1:40 Ls are asked to fill in the gaps from 5 to 6 and describe the scenes.
Freeze frame 2:08 Ls are asked to fill in the gaps from 7 to 8 and describe the scenes. Ls are asked to describe the given picture which is related to the zoo/wild animals.
List of animated stories and songs