SINK OR FLOAT: TEACHING EFL TO VERY YOUNG LEARNERS THROUGH REAL-LIFE EXPERIENCE

Edita Hornáčková Klapicová

(Nitra, Slovakia)

Preschool institutions in Europe often build foreign language instruction into their curriculum. The amount of classroom hours is often very restricted, sometimes to just one hour per week. The number of children in the foreign language classroom may vary and there are also other factors that affect the learning process, such as, the presence of a native speaker and, above all, the teaching techniques and strategies used in the foreign language classroom. The present paper offers some practical tips for teaching a foreign language to very young learners in a natural and effective way.

“Real communication involves ideas, emotions, feelings, appropriateness and adaptability” (Chauhan 2004). Very young learners should be able to acquire a foreign language in a natural setting through active interaction. Due to their age, this group of learners are still getting to know the world around them and developing skills in their mother tongue. Consequently, learning a second language may occur very naturally and become meaningful, if it happens through real-life experience.

The present paper is part of a research project carried out in a kindergarten in lower Austria. The aim of the project was to prove the possibility of achieving bilinguality in children through their English lessons in kindergarten. The aim of the present paper is to show some of the teaching techniques and classroom activities enhancing natural acquisition of English as a foreign language.

According to Schuman’s (1996) language acquisition theory, “whatever concept/cognitive development a child masters in the native language is transferred to the second language” (Gadušová 2004, 35). Teachers “create meaningful communicative situations in the classroom, as close to mother language acquisition as possible, while learners are exposed to a variety of printed, auditory, and visual materials in the target language” (ibid. 35-36). Learning by experience; being involved mentally, physically, and emotionally in classroom activities; and having the opportunity to do “hands-on” experiences with materials provide a very successful learning environment for preschool children. Most of the activities used in the present project followed this concept, one of which will be presented in this paper.

  1. Sink or float

An intriguing activity, always captivating the attention of the child and immersing him into the world of science is the “sink or float” experiment performed with different objects placed in a transparent plastic or glass container filled with water.

1.1.Preparation

The following props were used in the experiment: two large plastic containers filled with water, a number of objects different in weight, shape, material, and color.

1.2. Procedure

Learners were introduced to the activity by first reviewing some vocabulary words, such as water, container, transparent, full, heavy, light, plastic, glass, etc. Consequently, the words sink and float were introduced and explained through visual demonstration. Learners were invited to first observe how the experiment was done – by placing different objects into the containers filled with water and testing which of them went to the bottom of the container – or sank, and which stayed on the surface – or floated. Later on, individual learners were invited to pick an object and put it in water, while the rest of the learners were asked to guess whether that particular object was going to sink or float. The learners cooperated extremely well in this activity either through the physical action of choosing an object and placing it in the container or by engaging in a vivid conversation about their guesses on which objects would sink or float.

1.3. Achieved skills

Through this activity, the learners were able to achieve the following skills:

a) Phonological features: pronunciation, prosodic features: stress, rhythm, and intonation; aspects of connected speech: assimilation, elision, and linking;

b) Vocabulary and meaning: sink, float, water, container, transparent, full, heavy, light, plastic, glass, guess, think, pick, choose, rubber duck, car, doll, cup, coin, pencil, paper, lemon, comb, brush, egg, ball, heart, etc.

c) Grammar: the simple past tense, the present participle forms, auxiliary verbs, the active voice and the passive voice of verbs, singular and plural forms of nouns, regular and irregular forms of verbs, pronouns, quantifiers, etc.;

d) Sentence structure: statements, forming questions, prepositional phrases, word order, noun phrases, verb phrases, adverbial phrases, etc.;

e) Style: the colloquial style, the polite style, common expressions, expressive vocabulary, etc.;

f) Pragmatic aspects: turn-taking rules; speech acts of asking questions, etc.;

g) Listening skills: through listening to the instructor and peers;

h) Speaking skills: through interaction with the instructor and peers;

i) Social skills: through active participation in the activity, responding to questions, taking part in actions, interaction with the instructor and peers;

j) Communicative skills: providing answers to questions, engagement in dialogues;

k) Sociolinguistic competence: providing the appropriate words or expressions in a given context;

l) Discourse competence: through the exposure to the structure of a longer text in speech, and

m) Strategic competence: through the learners’ attempt to maintain communication.

1.4. Conclusion

This “hands-on” activity provided a real-life experience through which the learners were able to learn new things about the functioning of the world with the use of the target language. English as a foreign language was not an obstacle, while the learners were discovering new things around them and labelling them with names in English. The learners soon comprehended the meaning of the verbs sink and float and actively used these words in their discussion. Through this activity, learners were engaged mentally, physically, emotionally, and socially, while acquiring new linguistic skills. This highly motivating teaching strategy also had a positive influence on building the learners’ self-confidence in using the target language in communication and on eliminating the learners’ anxiety from learning. The atmosphere in the classroom was relaxed and friendly, providing the learners’ with the opportunity to acquire the target language in a natural, spontaneous, and stimulating manner.

Acknowledgement

The author gratefully acknowledges the contribution of the Scientific Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic under the grant 1/0454/18.

References:

  1. Chauhan, V. Drama Techniques for Teaching English. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. X, No. 10, October 2004. Web. 13 Nov. 2017.

  2. Gadušová, Z. Teória a prax osvojovania cudzích jazykov. Nitra, UKF, 2004. ISBN 80-8050-736-8