Revista simpozionului Eficiență și calitate în educație - 19 mai 2017 Eficiență și calitate în educație | Page 11

TEACHING ENGLISH THROUGH SONGS AND GAMES
TO GRADE 0 LEARNERS
Andreea Simona Orăștean, Colegiul Național „Octavian Goga” Sibiu
Abstract:
This work comprises the benefits that songs and games have in teaching or learning English, in adittion to
some other theoretical issues about these two methods and a list of some games that can be used in
teaching English to 0 graders.
The word ”child” is often associated with the word ”play”. Why? Because playing is children's favourite and
most important activity. That's why learning a new language at an early age means acquiring that language
naturally, without much effort and the best way of doing this is to use songs and games in the learning
process. Games make learning fun.
Both games and songs have purposes and outcomes. In order to play or sing children have to say things.
They have to repeat things and it is very well known that ”repetition is the mother of skill”. 0 graders have a
lot of energy and they are not good at attending formal lessons for long periods, so if they participate in a
game involving physical movements from time to time, they will never get bored. It is difficult for teachers to
keep a class of thirty 0 graders engaged in a 50 minutes lesson. But if we alternate different games, activities
or songs the students will not get uninterested or impatient.
Key words: Grade 0, songs, games, teach English, vocabulary, benefits.
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Teaching English to Grade 0 students can be both a rewarding and a demanding
experience. How can we react when some of them are crying and don’t want to be IN THE
classroom? What should we do when they start crawling under tables or throwing different
objects? How do we deal with the children who don’t want to say or do anything? And how
can we manage to organise trips to the toilet without finding ourselves with an empty
classroom?
Teachers are new people in their lives and they also find themselves in a new
environment with new rules. All of these can be very destabilizing for very young children
who are used to being around their parents and people they know. We really need to build
up their trust, to offer them enjoyable time before they can learn anything.
How can we do that?
We should always keep them busy with various activities
They should always be challenged because if they are bored then they will soon play up.
We should help the children who don’t understand even if we use stronger pupils as
resources. Children love helping other children even at 6!
We always should have “back up”, a reserve of extra activities for those who finish quickly.
If we teach large classes we should try to limit activities where everyone has to listen to us.
So the key is to vary the type of activity and grouping we use. 30 students aged 6 usually
means noise. The louder we shout, the louder they will become. We have to find some
methods to chill them out. For example, I use a short ”poem” for this: ”1,2,3 - Lock your
mouth and throw the key!”
It is proved that young learners have short attention spans and a lot of physical
energy. In addition, children are very much linked to their surroundings and are more
interested in the physical and the tangible. For young students, from ages 5 to10
especially, it is a good idea to move quickly from an activity to another. We shouldn't
spend more than 10 or 15 minutes on a single activity because children become bored
easily. As children get older, their ability to concentrate for longer periods of time
increases. So for students aged 5–7, we should try to keep activities between 5 and 10
minutes long and to repeat or re-examine that topic/activity for the following classes. For
example, if we teach a song, a vocabulary lesson or telling a story, we shouldn't stay on
that song or story the whole class time. We might follow up the song or story with a related
TPR (Total Physical Response) activity. Then have students play a quick game in pairs.
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