Young Learnersare individuals of very early age who are interested in many new things such as a foreign language, English.

Teaching Speakinghas been undervalued and English language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues.

1. Introduction

In this chapter, will be discussed about some of the points which are

related to teaching English for young learner, those are :

a. A description of speaking and the role of speaking in children’s

development of their first language.

b. Background information on the teaching of speaking.

c. An explanation of the development of speaking skills, including

specific issues that you will encounter in the classroom.

d. A number of different techniques and activities which you can use

with young learner.

e. Suggestions for managing the noise level in the classroom.

TEACHING SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS

2. What is speaking?

Speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use

of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts. Speaking is a

crucial part of second language learning and teaching.

There are many different ways that children play with words and language

beginning with the tickling rhymes that they hear as babies and continuing

with other sort of play which involve both the form and meaning of

language (Cook,2000).

When children beginning speaking, they experiment and play with the

utterances that are made to form words and phrases (Example: bye-bye or

go bye-bye)

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Play is a vital and important aspect of a child’s development and language

is a part of that play.

3. Background to the teaching of speaking

Speaking is equally important in children’s overall language development.

Young learners are like sponges, they soak up everything we say and how

we say it. Thus clear and correct pronunciation is of vital importance, since

young learners repeat exactly what they hear.

Song

Poem

Rhyme

Chant

Try to include the above-mentioned activities by providing learners with

those that require total physical response, shortly known as "TPR".

4. The development of speaking skills

Young learners, since they are “young” and their speaking equipment has

not yet developed perfectly, will probably have limitations inspeaking.

Young children learning English as a foreign language do not develop

English Language skills more readily than older learners. However, they

have a clear advantage when it comes to pronunciation if they begin

learning English as a foreign or second language at an early age

(Birdsong, 1999). Nevertheless, there are some phonemes which children

have difficulty with.

Sometimes the cause of difficulty can be as simple as baby teeth that

have fallen out and are not yet replaced by adult teeth. Or a child may

have just received dental braces and may be slightly struggling with

different phonemes because of this. So, teacher sometimes needs to

carefully look at children’s mouths when they are having trouble

pronouncing different sounds. Also, teachers need consider about Mean

Length of Utterances (MLU) and overgeneralization of errors to avoid

unrealistic expectations. The expectations for children learning English

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is a wonderful way of making students sing/talk and at the same time (unconsciously) work at their grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation

should not be greater or more demanding than the expectations for

children learning to speak in english as their native language.

Mean Length of Utterances

MLU are the number of morphemes found in sample of a child’s

utterances. A morpheme is the smallest unit of a meaning in a word. There

is some debate aboutwhat the MLU is for children of different ages.

However, it is widely accepted thatvery young children produce MLUs

which are shorter than older children. The expectations for speaking for

children should be tailored to their development.

Pronounciation and young learners

As stated above, when young children are learning to speak in english as

their native language, they sometimes have difficulty articulating spesific

phonemes such as /th/ or /r/. These difficulties can occur due to

developmental factors in children of different, with them has different

abilities, they become able to articulate the different phonemes of

english,so an English teacher should pay attention more deeply to his

student, A native speaker of english have difficulty articulating /r/ and she

learned to therapists and therapists fortunately it helped her learn how to

properly articulate /r/.

5. Classroom techniques and activities

Speaking activities are an important part of any young learners’ ESL and

EFL classroom. When teaching speaking, it is especially important to

select activities which match the objectives of your program. And then,

the specific techniques and tasks that you choose should be based on the

aims of the program coupled with the learners’ stages of development.

Audiolingual Method (ALM)

The Audiolingual Method to language teaching is based on the notion that

one can learn language by developing habits based on the patterns of

language (Celce-Murcia, 2001).

There are two important features of ALM which can easily be adapted for

young learner classroom: drill with choral response and dialogues. The

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first feature typical of ALM is drills aimed at getting learners to practice

using the patterns that occur in language.

Dialogues

The second feature of ALM is dialogue. Dialogues provide learners with

grammatically controlled scripts that they can use in real life.

Using puppets to introduce dialogues

Teachers working with young learner are often aware that children feel

more comfortable talking with a puppet than with an adult (Slattery and

Willis, 2003). The use of puppets is very appropriate in the young-learner

classroom. Puppets also make the language-learning activity more fun!

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

CLT is an approach and a philosophical orientation that connects

classroom based language learning with the language that learners need

in order to communicate outside of the classroom (Nunan, 2003). The

examples are role playing a flight attendant and an airline passenger, role

play finding a pair of lost things and playing board games.

Games

Play is a purposeful activity and games are a part of playing. As such,

games are a very appropriate teaching technique in the young learner

classroom. The example is Concentration, also known as Memory. This is a

game which can be played with partners on in small groups. The game is

made with two sets of 10 matching cards with vocabulary item that

children are studying. The 20 cards are placed face down on a table. Each

of the players says sentences prompted by the cards that they turn over.

If he cards are the same, the player gets to “keep” them until the end of

the game. If the cards are different, then the child places them face down

in the same spot they originally found them. The winner is the player with

the most cards at the end of the game.

Talking and writing box

The Talking and Writing Box is made of pictures that children have self-

selected and are interesting to them. When children are asked to talk

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about the pictures on their box, they talk about things that are of interest

to them because they have selected the pictures for the box. When talking

about their pictures, children become animated because they are talking

about something of interest to them. By using Talking and Writing Box,

children are able to personalize the information that they share.

Teaching pronunciation

a. Rhymes, finger play, and chants

It help teacher speaking children learn how to pronounce words

correctly. We can select rhymes and finger plays that focus on a

specific phonemes or sound or set of sounds.

b. Using mirrors

For help the young learners learn about their pronunciation, we can

use mirrors in the class. The children who have difficulty with

certain sounds often do not know how to form their lips and mouths

in such a way as to correctly articulate the sounds. And the mirrors

probably work so well because they give children an awareness of

how easily they can adjust their pronunciation.

c. Tongue twisters

Tongue Twisters generally have the same phoneme repeated over

and over again. It is hard to articulate the same sound over and

over again. One of the tongue twisters is how many peppers did

Peter pick. Children adore tongue twisters because they perceive

saying the sounds as a game or challenge.

Error Correction

As the teacher of young learners must spend time correcting not only

behavior but also errors. Bailley (2005) points out that it is not necessary

for a teacher to respond to all errors. We can handle errors by modeling

and providing children with the correct grammar or pronunciation.

Example:

T : What does she do at 6.00?

S : She do her math homework at 6.00

T : She does her math homework at 6.00. yes, she does her math

homework at 6.00.

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In above example, the teacher notices the error and then models the

correct response rather than telling the children that they were wrong.

6. Managing speaking activities

When looking at language teaching, it is important to consider the

technical knowledge. For the pure sake of survival, it is crucial that you

have well-planned lessons, that contain activities where children are

interested and stay on task.

Managing the noise level

During a speaking activity, the noise level alone can quickly escalate and

disturb other classes. Teacher who do not use communicative approaches

in their claasroom can be especially harsh if the noise level seems to

become too high. As part of a well-rounded English-language curriculum,

children should be given nomerous opportunities to speak in class,

Children can be taught a number of signals to become quiet. Do not try to

shout over children. You can use the fishbowl technique in the activity.

7. Speaking in the classroom

In addition to games, children's coursebooks often help children practice

specific language patterns and pre-scripted conversations. Sometimes it is

hard to find activities that only focus on speaking since so many of the

pages also contain print which adds reading to the activity.

8. Conclusion

Speaking is equally important in children’s overall language development.

Young learners are like sponges, they soak up everything we say and how

we say it. Thus clear and correct pronunciation is of vital importance, since

young learners repeat exactly what they hear.

The teacher can use the Audio Lingual Method and Communicative

Language Teaching as appropriate methods to teaching speaking for

young learners. And then, as the teacher has to choose the classroom

techniques and activities which are fun and comfortable. When managing

the classroom situation, the teacher can teach a number of signals to

become quiet. Do not try to shout over children.

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