V. LISTENING, ORAL WORK, READING, AND WRITING

V. LISTENING, ORAL WORK, READING, AND WRITING 

We all agreed that teaching has been a great experience for us since we had the opportunity to learn from children and share with them our knowledge.

When people start learning a new language, they must be exposed to the different forms of it.

It is very important that children get used the language by listening it because at the age of five years old they do not know how to read or write yet.

In fact, Listening is the first skill that children acquired. Children trusted us when they asked for some words, so it meant a big responsibility for us.

We had to be really prepared to face any kind of doubt of question from our students; we did not want to teach them to mispronounce a word.
Children presented some problems when speaking, for example, they could not pronounce "three" properly as they were not accostumed to the language and to its particular pronunciation.

Reading and Writing were skills in which we did not focus so much because they have not learnt how to read or write.

We consider that the most difficult skill to teach is speaking.

Salvadorean children are not interested in learning English yet, and because of their lack of interest they forget easily words and their meanings not to mention pronunciation.

CONTRASTING OUR OWN EXPERIENCES AS A KINDER GARDEN TEACHERS IN EL SALVADOR WITH THE THEORY GIVEN IN BOOKS

Being an English teacher in El Salvador is a difficult task. Children do not care about about the language because they do not need it. 
But children who are learning English as their second language find a way to form part of a big group of native speakers as well as to survive in that environment.

In other words, English has an important and somewhat vital role in their lives.

We think that if children needed the language to survive here in El Salvador, they would engage with the language.

ACTIVITIES TRIED IN CLASSES

We decided to try some of the activities described in the book “Teaching English to Children” in order to accomplish our objectives in our teaching practicum.

When it comes to listening, speaking, reading, and writing, there are some activities that help teachers in developing these children’s skills. Let´s take a look at some of the activities we decided to put into practice.

Moving about

When we asked our students to physically move about, they always used to show excitement about these types of activities.

We usually used them for assessing their understanding of previous topics by using some commands or by asking them to mention what they had learnt before.

This was a successful and useful tool since our students enjoyed doing activities that involved physical movements.

Listen and color

This was an entertaining activity for our students. They have a huge imagination, so they carried out this task in a magnificent way.

They could relate the colors in English to some objects in the classroom and to the color pencils when they were asked to do so.

We did not change anything in these activities; besides, they were helpful and advantageous for both teachers and syudents.

Silhouettes

We used them to present a new a topic in order to make our students feel comfortable in the class. We tried doing silhouettes of an airplane, a bus, and a car to teach means of transportation. Students kept paying attention during the whole presentation of this topic, so it meant this resource caught their interest.

Straight Copying

Since very young learners do not know how to read, it is obvious that they can not write. But it did not mean that our students could not recognize some consonants or vowels. Though they did not understand what they were writing, this experience helped them make contact with spelling -an important feature of the language.