Sharing about my problem in teaching English to children

Posted by Almusto Shidqi on Sunday, October 13, 2013 0

When I was teaching in Elementary school, I got a problem of how to teach English in a fun way. Most of  elementary school teachers have the same problem. Teaching English for kids/children is different from that of the secondary students. English in Indonesia is a foreign language and it’s difficult to teach it even for children. Teaching English for children needs special treatments.

My elementary students

Day after day I tried to find a good method to teach English to my students. I read some books, I searched in internet then finally I got the exact method myself. I tried to use English songs and games. By means of them, I taught my students to build new English vocabularies. Kids and children tend to love singing and acting. They are easy to imitate and memorize songs. By singing they learn to pronounce words in correct way.

Another method is by using games to improve  English words. Children like playing games. I had ever applied the game “Spider Web” it really made the children enjoy learning English. They learned  English through activities to move and act their bodies from one place to another. When I taught about “direction and location” for the sixth grade students, I used my own games, I found it myself. I called it ” the treasury game” one of the students was asked to come in front of the class. I covered his/her eyes with a cloth, then I put money as the treasure in certain place. The student must follow my order where he/she must go in blind eyes. He/she will find the treasure if he/she does the correct action according to my order. Finally the treasure becomes his/her own. The reward I offered encouraged them to learn English expressions in direction and location. They were so enthusiastic to learn English from then on.