Teaching Children English

Educating children can be one of your most rewarding overseas experiences. Learn to have fun as you inspire your students to learn through games, activities, and more!

Teaching children will be the most fun you’ll ever have in a TESOL classroom, if you are properly prepared.

Children are full of energy and need to be kept busy. Most teaching positions will usually come with textbooks, but most other creative materials/activities will need to be provided by you. This course will teach you how to develop your own ESL classroom activities for children. This is a hands-on course with improving classroom practice as the the goal, rather than a pass or fail objective.

The course is divided into four sections. The first part deals with the theory and practice of teaching children. The second part includes why we should use games in the classroom and explains the different types of games available. The third part is a collection of songs to use in your TESOL classroom, and the final part explains how to use coloring and art as an effective alternate classroom activity.

Studies have shown that all children, regardless of their first language, learn language in more or less the same way. A child’s age determines certain points of language acquisition they should already have reached, referred to as language acquisition milestones.

Teaching Children English breaks down the theory behind language acquisition as it applies to teaching English to children, and also defines their verbal and physical milestones. The second part of the course deals with the most important aspect of teaching children: the ability to plan games!

Students learn best when they are having fun, and games are both fun and competitive. More importantly, they are repetitive enough to make any type of drill/rote memorization fun. Also included are units on singing songs and how to use coloring effectively.

1. 2 theory assignments
2. Board game and pair-work task
3. Team game task
4. Running game task
5. Card game task
6. Miscellaneous games task
7. Flashcard task
8. 2 game and 2 song lesson plans
9. 2 song CDs/cassettes to compile
10. 2 children’s show DVDs/videos to compile
11. 7 coloring tasks
12. Final course assignment

Q: How can we establish a basic language target for beginners?

A: There are two basic things to remember. One is to avoid overload, and the second is to constantly recycle the learning. Students should first be introduced to concepts they are familiar with in their own language and then be allowed to branch out to other concepts once they understand the basics.

Q: What factors determine the effectiveness of teaching English to children who are new to second language acquisition?

A: The amount of time the kids are in class, how much they practice, how good the teacher is, the quality of the resources in the classroom, the home environment – all of these determine how well young learners acquire language. Unfortunately, most classes do not have qualified instructors, and the resources provided are inadequate.

This is where your training from TESOL Training International will make the difference. Having completed the Teaching Children English specialization course, you will be equipped to deal with the challenges presented in a classroom of young English students. Properly prepared, you will find teaching children English to be wonderfully rewarding and fun!