1. motivation children to learn english topic, situations and language functions

TOPIC: TEACHING ENGLISH TO YOUNG VISUAL LEARNERS
PLAN:
INTRODUCTION
1.MOTIVATION CHILDREN TO LEARN ENGLISH
2.TOPIC, SITUATIONS AND LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS
3.LEARNING THRAIGH ACTIVITIES, GAMES AND SONGS
CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION
Children differ from adult learners in many ways. It was commonly thought that infants lack the ability to form complex ideas. For much of this century, the dominant models offered in educational psychology courses have been Behaviourism, particularly by B. F. Skinner (1974), and the radically different model of Developmental Psychology proposed by Jean Piaget (1971). The behaviourist psychologists accepted the thesis that children learn by passively reacting to stimuli and to the reinforcements which the environment or people within that environment provide. The child learns by passively reacting to stimuli and to the reinforcements, which the environment or people within that environment provide. At other extreme, the Piagetian view has presented the child as actively constructing his or her own thinking by acting upon the physical and social environment. Although these theories differed in important ways, they shared an emphasis on considering children as active learners who are able to set goals, play and revise.
Motivating Children To Learn English
The fact that children may need external sources of motivation puts a tremendous responsibility on the teachers. Rivers (1983) advises foreign language teacher to capitalise on the children’s autonomous impulses such as curiosity, the desire to know and understand, the desire to play and explore, and the impulse to manipulate features of the environment. Children need to learn English through contexts that appeal and make sense to them. These contexts should be a part of their world. The following sub-sections are all related to various ways of motivating children to learn English.
Topics, Situations And Language Functions
The material used for teaching children should be consistent with their identity and developmentally appropriate. When teaching language, we need to think of the whole child, and enhance general socio-emotional, cognitive, communicative and educational development. This is one reason why choice of topic is important.
Situations used in the classroom need to be authentic, interesting to children, and should reflect the culture of the target language. The language used must be compatible with the children’s maturity level and linguistic ability, appropriate to the situation at hand, and like that commonly used by native speakers in similar situations. As Scott and Ytreberg (1990:3) express, young children love to play, and learn best when they are enjoying themselves. However, they also take themselves seriously and like to think that what they are doing is “real” work.
Learning Through Activities, Games and Songs
Games are an important part of a teacher’s repertoire. Although they are recreational activities by nature whose main purpose is enjoyment, in the language learning process their purpose can be to introduce a teaching item or reinforce what has already been taught. In the course of a game, learners are engaged in an enjoyable and challenging activity with a clear goal. Often, students are so involved in playing the games that they do not realise they are practising language. There are several game-like activities that may be used as a basis for listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar activities, and would add a refreshing dimension to language teaching and learning. In fact, an ordinary language activity can be transferred into a game by adding some challenge, competition and fun element in it.
Participation by the teacher in games and activities helps the children overcome any inhibitions they may have. The teacher should nevertheless take every precaution not to dominate activities in order to give the children the opportunity for selfexpression. She should be also on the lookout for signs of boredom with each activity and be willing to go to another activity when such signs appear.
Most language teachers are aware of the advantages of using songs in the elementary classroom, whether they actually use songs in their teaching or not. Songs create a positive feeling for language learning, awakening interest during the lesson, and stimulating students to greater oral participation breaking the monotony of the lesson. Singing is a happy and stress-free activity that will add to a positive classroom-learning environment. Furthermore, children’s songs often include a lot of repetition that helps to make language memorable.
Moreover, songs contain chunks of language that children can remember and use. Participation by the teacher in games and activities helps the children overcome any inhibitions they may have. The teacher should nevertheless take every precaution not to dominate activities in order to give the children the opportunity for selfexpression. She should be also on the lookout for signs of boredom with each activity and be willing to go to another activity when such signs appear.
CONCLUSION
Teaching young learners is different from teaching adults. Young children tend to change their mood every other minute, their attention span is limited. On the other hand, they show a greater motivation than adults to do things that appeal to them. For this reason, the exposure to variety of exercises makes their learning better. The variety of exercises may not be an adequate reason for them being motivated to learn the language. If they are exposed to the authentic language which makes them to interact naturally in the language, they feel more satisfied while learning the language.