Primary English teachers have a wider responsibility than just teaching English. We need to think about the education of the whole child. The way children learn English and the way to teach it depends on the child’s developmental stage. As a general rule, the younger the child, the more holistic a learner they are.
Younger learners respond to language according to what it does or what they can do with it, rather than treating it as an abstract system. They respond to underlying meaning rather than individual words or sentences and cannot make the analytical links that older learners make.
Younger learners are great mimics, are often unselfconscious, and are usually prepared to enjoy the activities. This makes motivation easy provided the class is enjoyable and stimulating:
Activities should be simple enough for children to understand what is expected of them
The task should be within their abilities, achievable whilst being sufficiently stimulating to provide satisfaction.
Activities should be largely orally based, and with very young children listening activities should take up a large proportion of time.
Written activities should be used sparingly. Very young children are often not yet proficient in the mechanics of writing in their own language.
The kinds of activities that work well are games and songs with actions, total physical response activities, tasks that involve colouring, cutting, and sticking, simple, repetitive stories, and simple, repetitive speaking activities that have an obvious communicative value.
Even with older children, the focus should continue to be on language as a vehicle of communication and not on grammar, though the ability of older children to make logical links and deductions can be exploited. Tasks should lead children to discover simple grammatical rules for themselves as part the ‘learning to learn’ process.