TEACHING ENGLISH FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

“Teaching Reading for Children”

By:

Haidar Apriliawaty Hamisi

201536028

ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM

LANGUAGE AND ART DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES

PATTIMURA UNIVERSITY

2019

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 PREFACE

Reading is one of the basic skills of English language out of Listening, Speaking and
Writing. Reading is way more refers to comprehend or understand the written text and combines
their understanding with prior knowledge. The possession of a good reading skill will enable the
individual to be able to assimilate a written work within a short period while reading. If an
individual develops a reading skill, it is a lifelong activity. Reading is also an art that if student or
any individual interested in undertaking a reading skill they must form a practice of reading
habit.

Teaching reading to children becomes a challenge for a teacher to make them develop their
reading ability. Of course it is not an easy task to make them understand what is written in a text
as children are tending to play and do body activity instead of sitting in the classroom with
plenty of theories. This paper will explain three appropriate technique in teaching reading for
children to add teacher’s knowledge in teaching reading technique in the classroom.

Ambon, 2019

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 TABLE OF CONTENT

Preface........................................................................................................................................... 2

Table of Content ........................................................................................................................... 3

Chapter I: Introduction .................................................................................................................. 4

Chapter II: Discussion................................................................................................................... 5

Chapter III: Closing Statement ..................................................................................................... 8

References ..................................................................................................................................... 9

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 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Reading takes an important role as speaking, listening and writing in learning language
whether learning a second language of foreign language. As a country that has more than seven
hundred first languages, learning a foreign language is not an easy and quick acquisition as
learning the first language especially learning to read or even comprehend the reading text. That
is why how important some theories and practiced of teaching the students reading ability in the
classroom in order to make them easier to comprehend the reading material itself. However, does
the students have a willing to read? As nowadays internet has taking a very big role on the
people around the world, not gonna lie that internet has ruins people’s life, especially the
students themselves. the fact that students tend to browse the internet rather than reading a book
to find the solution of every school problem is now being a crucial and obvious thing, not only
students but also teacher as well. But internet also involves some reading terms that the students
and teachers usually had in their daily basis. They use the social media to communicate each
other, reading comments or writing status, it’s a part of reading learning outside the classroom
although not related to their courses but it takes an important role for the comprehension of what
is the reading actually should be. Because reading is not only in the classroom and just read the
whole book material or passages, but also how the students use the reading comprehension
technique in their daily basis as well.

Despite of the social media or internet can also influence the students’ reading ability, it
doesn’t mean that we can ignore the main or basic skill of teaching the young learners to
comprehend the reading ability. We know that teaching is not a very easy task to make the
students’ learned and it could be fun to some teachers, it could be hard for some of them. That is
why theory before practice is very important. This paper will state three appropriate techniques
and approach to teach our young students the reading ability.

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 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

Kavlu (2015) has stated that in order to acquire the apprehending and comprehending the
environment, community and of themselves, reading takes a principal aim for ESL and EFL
learners and it enables the learners to elaborate and interact with what they read. This statement
support what I have mentioned above that students interact themselves in social media becomes
their daily basis activity and it makes reading takes a principal aim for their environment and
community themselves. However, to teach the young learners reading ability is not the same as
teaching the regular students or the adult one because teaching is a something that has to be
doing according to the levels of the students especially for the young students themselves.

Children and adults are different when it comes to a teaching and learning activity.
Children are easier to catch the materials but they do not comprehend the abstract ideas such as
grammar (Bourke, 2006) because their age is just too young to comprehend such things. Children
are tending to have a fun activity instead of studying like adults. That is why they need such fun
learning strategies in classroom or topic they only like and want to know. Children in the
primary age will only learn the answer of “what and “why” because they start to have the
awareness of their language learning.

Phonemic Awareness

There are bunch of teaching reading strategies but based on the characteristic of the
young learners I have mentioned above, the first technique that the teacher can use to teach the
young students reading ability is by taking the early literacy or linguistic awareness that we can
teach them the phonemic awareness first. This technique can be applied for the students of
kindergarten, first grade of elementary school or even a child of 3 years old that parents can
teach their children to read before they come to the primary school as mentioned by N’Namdi
(2005) that parents plays an important role for their children learning preparations. James et al
(1998) characterized the phonemic awareness as the facility for the language learner to
manipulate the sounds of oral speech. The phonemic awareness specifically focuses on
phonemes as it becomes a successful predictor in reading acquisition. The phonemic awareness
works on children by using a simple flashcards of the single letters instead of the word first. Here

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we don’t teach them the name of the letters, but we teach them the sound of the letters. Once
they are able to know the sounds of each letters, we can continue to blending the letters of
vowels and consonants or consonants vowel consonants according to the word we teach them.
e.g [C A T] [S I T] etc. here we can make a chart of the combining vowel and consonants to
make the students easier to combining the words. We can use this technique at home even for a 3
years old child as it is a very easy technique for a start. But how can we use the phonemic
awareness in the classroom? the practice in the classroom, as stated by James et al (1998), the
teacher can provide the fun environment such as sing a song, nursery rhymes, poems or anything
that can stimulate the sounds of a language or the phonemic awareness in the classroom.

Developing Literacy

After we teach them the phonemic awareness, we can continue developing their literacy
environment in the classroom. Of course there are lots of techniques related literacy
development. In order to create a literate environment in the classroom, here are some ideas
listed by Cameron (2001):

1. Labels
Here we can label their desk, chair, book, or any object around the classroom and
school.
2. Posters
Posters can be an effective way to influence their reading ability by posting some eye-
catching posters in the classroom related to the topic they are going to learn. It can be
an advertisement, or anything they can learn.
3. Messages
By writing some message on their book for example as writing “don’t forget to do
your homework” or “it is a nice story” on their book can also influence their reading
skills at a young age, even this technique still used in the university in making a
feedback of students’ work.
4. Reading Aloud
Reading aloud can be done by the teacher or the students. Teacher can read the text
aloud while the students pay attention to the passage or the students can read once
after the teacher read in order to check their comprehension of the passage.

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Kinesthetic Activity

This technique was suggested by N’Nambi (2005) that we can use the stories the students
read in the class into a role play. It works by dividing the students into groups and act out the
play the other groups in the classroom. During the performance, there is a moment where the
audience will be asked to guess what is going to happen next. And after the performance done,
the teacher will asked the students in reference the children saw in the play or summarize the
information. After that, the students should be able to tell what new information they learned
from the play and they should be able to express new knowledge based on the classroom
activities. So this technique is very useful to develop the students’ comprehension of reading
passage. This technique is also a way more fun because it includes a fun activity such a role play
that the students like.

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 CHAPTER III

CLOSING STATEMENT

There are lots of techniques that have been offered by many experts around the world, but
to teach children the reading, it is completely different. Children needs lots of attention as they
love to play the whole time, we cannot just teaching them in class with a bunch of theories on
how to read otherwise they will not growing and developing their basic language skill at all.
Those three main techniques I mentioned in this paper are the most effective technique based on
the experts has offered. As they are completely based on the characteristic of children themselves
who loves fun activity in the classroom so we as a teacher should have the fun intention while
teaching reading to the young learners. This means creating warm atmosphere is very important
while teaching to the young learners and communicate the positive beliefs before starting the
teaching and learning activity such as giving them motivation to learn or explaining them why do
we need to have reading ability. This also will engage the students’ reinforcement in the
classroom. However, each child has a variety of emotional environment that can influence their
reading ability by themselves. as a teacher, we can only help to facilitate and enhance what they
already have by understanding that each students’ development and vary.

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 REFERENCES

Bourke, J. (2006). Designing a topic-based syllabus for young learners. ELT Journal, 60/3, pp.
279-286

Cameron, L (2001) Teaching Languages to Young Learners. UK:Cambridge University Press

James et al. (April 1998). Phonemic Awareness and the Teaching of Reading: A Position
statement from the board of directors of the international reading association. International
Reading Association. p 7

Kavlu, A. (Sep 1, 2015). The Place Reading in EFL Context. International Journal of Social
Sciences and Educational Studies. Vol. 2 no. 1

N’Namdi, Kemba, A. (2015). Guide to Teaching Reading at the primary school level.
France:Paris. United Nations Educational scientific and cultural organizations. UNESCO