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Special Features

Turn to the Child and Shed Expectations

Classifications generate expectations. The expectation is a risky state of consciousness, as it sets precarious standards. It’s easy to lose sight of what is important when assessing against quantitative grids. Classification of learners according to age groups is convenient and cost-effective. A question on the reliability of this categorization is an...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

How young is too young to learn a Foreign Language?

HOW YOUNG IS TOO YOUNG TOO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE  Quite often in a monolingual family we are confronted with the dilemma of what is the appropriate age for our kids to start learning a foreign language. Should they first be exposed to a new language as early as kindergarten or should we wait until the first years of primary school, when our little ones try to master the written form of their mother...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Teaching English to adults

Teaching English to adults has its own set of challenges and rewards for the EFL teacher but requires a whole range of different skills and qualifications. Their motivation is intrinsic which is a great advantage as this has been identified as one of the most important factors in determining successful language learning. The acquisition of a second...
ELT News Teaching Adults

The Young and the Restless

  Teaching a Junior Class for the First Time It’s their first day of school, as your new pupils rush to their seats in anticipation of what they are going to do. Some are more timid than the rest, while others literally have no clue as to the logic of their presence there. You can see the curiosity on their faces as to why they should attend yet another...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Teaching Young Learners: The age of Innocence

By Nancy Tasiopoulou, English Teacher, Doukas Primary School   Teaching young learners is a unique experience, as it brings together the use of art, music, games, storytelling and technology. Not one day in the kindergarten is the same with another, as the children’s spontaneous and inquisitive nature can lead the lesson to new paths of acquiring...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Unleashing the potential of limericks: Humorous poetry for the EFL young learners

By Evangelia Vassilakou   Definition and general characteristics of limericks   Limericks are one of the most favourite poetic forms among children, and were popularized by Edward Lear. They originated in England the 18th or early 19th century. The fun of the limericks lies in their rollicking rhythm and broad humour. They are also easy to remember...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Teaching Adults and Classroom Management Issues

By Maroussa Pavli*      Are you teaching adults or thinking of doing so? Those of you who have already worked with adult learners can easily understand the relevance of the title of this article. Those who haven’t done this yet may doubt that classroom management is a topic to consider, but if you do read on, you’ll find out that everyday teaching...
ELT News Teaching Adults

Together we can!

Young learners (Primary Students) are curious, they want to create, explore, to question about the world! We have to help them explore! In this article, we will discuss some tips in order to create meaningful lessons for our young learners. If you want curious students, be curious yourself! Start planning your own questions about the world, search for...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

A class full of Young Learners: Teacher’s expectations and focal points in the EFL/ESL classroom

Characteristics of Young Learners      By Marina Siskou The conventional feeling towards the definition of “Young Learners” is that it is interchangeable with the concept of childhood.   Annamaria Pinter (2011) divides Young Learners into three groups.   The first group, preschool or early school years, is comprised of children who initiate...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Teaching English to Adults

Teaching English to adults has its own set of challenges and rewards for the EFL teacher but requires a whole range of different skills and qualifications. Adult learners may not need a certificate or diploma; their motivation is intrinsic which is a great advantage as this has been identified as one of the most important factors in determining successful...
ELT News Teaching Adults

Methods and Techniques for Young Learners

  A number of principles can inform the following approaches to teaching young learners. Build teaching around activities and physical movement. Link language learning to physical activities by having children use and hear English for making things, drawing pictures, completing puzzles, labelling pictures, matching words and pictures, playing games, acting...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Teaching Young Learners

It takes a special person to teach English as a foreign language. It takes an even more special person to teach English as a foreign language to young children.  Young learners can be a real pleasure to teach because they do not feel stressed by their studies and approach everything with youthful innocence. At this point in their lives, they may not...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Designing a course for adult learners: An analysis of the process and some practical tips

In my previous article I looked at the basic concepts in designing a course for adults. This article analyses the steps followed during this process and offers suggestions for each of those steps. The design process starts with an initial needs analysis followed by goal and objective setting, material selection, specification of the tasks to be used so that...
ELT News Teaching Adults

Looking out for new teaching resources for your Junior classes?

What often urges language teachers to look out for new teaching resources is their concern whether the new materials ‘out there’ are more appropriate for their junior learners, centred on their own interests, backed up by other components or more attractive in terms of visuals. More preoccupations stretch from whether their activities take less time to...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Teaching Young Children: An overview by Aris Mazarakis

The debate of how we should teach Languages to young children has been raging for decades and despite the existing methods, every teacher seems to walk into the language classroom armed with their own personal views and theories of what they should teach and how it should be taught. Eventually, most of those who teach such classes seem to employ rather...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Helping young learners to speak English in class

  One of the challenges that teachers face when teaching young learners is to encourage them to speak English throughout the lesson and gradually establish L2 as the main means of communication in class. Challenging though it may be, once achieved, it is most rewarding for learners and teachers. by Dimitris Primalis, Teacher, Teacher Trainer...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Motivating Adult Learners

The expansion of life-long learning along with ever-shifting workplace demands has brought into our schools and classrooms a growing number of adult learners.  Their learning needs, learner identity and learner characteristics differ significantly from those of young or teenage learners, yet oftentimes there is little reflection on how we are specifically...
Dimitris Spyropoulos Teaching Adults

Following the Child: Pre-School EAL and Why Montessori Had the Answers

Pre-School English as an Additional Language is notorious for the inexplicable challenge it withholds for us, teachers. Yet, phonemes and morphemes are the simplest units of language. Still, those feel impossible to teach to 3-year-olds.  The answer lies in the medium. Pre-school children are ready to acquire even more complex entities than phonemes...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

The views of some linguists and ELT authors on coursebooks

  ELT coursebook writers are professionals who create materials and resources for language teachers to use in their classes. They are responsible for designing and writing courses, lesson plans, exercises, and other materials that are used to teach English as a second or foreign language. ELT coursebook writers come from a variety of backgrounds...
ELT News Coursebooks

How To Engage Young Learners

We know that the essential ingredient that enables motivation to facilitate deep student learning is engagement. And as educators, we are very aware of how important it is for our learners to be engaged. Engagement has been defined as the extent to which students are connected to what they are learning, how they are learning it, and who they are learning...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Foreign Languages and Pre-Primary Students. Are We Overdoing It?

It comes as no surprise that the demands of our ever-developing society would at some point leave its mark on the generations which will succeed us. The necessity to harness a young individual’s true potential with the purpose of integrating it into the global machine has already taken its effect, as schools constantly update and enrich their syllabuses...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Teaching Materials and Young Learners

The enormous amount of existing materials for the teaching of English to young learners might lead us to think that everything has been invented and nothing is left to be discovered in EFL. But when you are in a real classroom working with children you realise that not all existing materials are equally successful in the class. Why is that? Why do children...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Coursebooks:the most important tools in language learning

Throughout my professional career, I have realized that coursebooks have always been an important, if not the most important tool in language learning. According to Richards (1998) for most teachers the textbook represents the main source of ideas for teaching. The usual attitude of most teachers is to focus their attention mainly on textbooks...
ELT News Coursebooks

The factor of anxiety in Young Learners' classes

The factor of anxiety in Young Learners classes  As English teachers, we’re almost always on the lookout for new and interesting ways to stimulate our language learners. It was ELT author and researcher Stephen D. Krashen who gave us his Affective Filter hypothesis of Second or Foreign language acquisition. (Krashen – Terrell, 1983)   His hypothesis states, that conditions which promote low...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Teaching Adult Classes? No Way!

Overcoming Your Fears of Educating Grown-ups Throughout our professional teaching careers, we have at some point received a form of criticism as regards our efficiency in class. Be it the quality of our work or even a comment which could be misinterpreted. Such was the case during my early years as an educator, as I was still wet behind the ears and was...
ELT News Teaching Adults

Grammar