Didáctica Teoría

GLA

Idioma Extranjero y su Didáctica

1. THE LANGUAGE
2. THE LEARNER’S FEATURES
3. THE TEACHING PROCESS
4. THE CONTENTS:
4.1. LISTENING
4.2. SPEAKING
4.3. READING & INTRODUCTION TO WRITING
4.4. VOCABULARY
(4.5. GRAMMAR-GAMES)
(4.6. PRONUNCIATION-GAMES)

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GLA

Idioma Extranjero y su Didáctica

1. THE LANGUAGE
Within the Communicative Language Teaching approach (CLT),Secondary and adult
education frameworks include the teaching of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and
writing) and the three language components (grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation).

Pronunciation
Comprehension

Production

Listening
Reading

Speaking
Writing

SKILLS
Oral language
Written language

Grammar

Vocabulary

LINGUISTIC COMPONENTS

Figure 1: Adultnotion of the language to be taught

However, Cameron (2001:19) suggests an approach in which the oral skills have
preference over the written ones, as children will probably still be grasping the complexities of
their mother tongue literacy skills –a shallow orthography- when beginning L2 learning –a deep
orthography-. Besides, she puts forward vocabulary as the most important languagecomponent,
replacing the explicit teaching of grammar with the notion of becoming aware of the language’s
formal features through the process of learning vocabulary chunks, which is also consequent with
some of the psycholinguistic features of children, not yet ready to follow metalinguistic
reasonings. This framework has been represented below (Figure 2). The focus is not on grammar
learning, buton expressing ideas in a meaningful context with the resources at hand.

Learning the foreign language
Learning the oral skills
Vocabulary
Conversation

learning the written language

Discourse
Extended talk

Grammar

Figure 2: Children’s notion of the language to be taught

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GLA

Idioma Extranjero y su Didáctica

2. THE LEARNERS’ FEATURES
Before reading
Small childrenrequire the teacher’s individual attention as much as possible. Their
attention span is small (five to fifteen minutes). For the teacher, it can be quite disconcerting
when a three-year-old wanders off in the middle of a song or story to play with a toy. It does not
mean they are not following what is going on; it is probably because some other child had the toy
before and they see this as theironly opportunity to get hold of it. We must not take it as a
personal rejection. It is very difficult to hold the attention of a whole group of small children and
the best way to do it is to ring the changes every five to ten minutes –unless you see that they are
all really absorbed in what they are doing, in which case the teacher can let it go on a bit longer.
Usually, children of this agelove what is familiar and may seem indifferent to something
new. However, this does not mean that the teacher should never try anything new, because what
is new in one lesson has become familiar by the second lesson.
Young children may spend a long time absorbing language before they actually produce
anything. It is not a good idea to try to force them to speak in the target language as thiscan
create a lot of emotional stress. By doing repetitive songs, rhymes, games and plenty of choral
work, children will be able to produce language without the stress of having to speak individually.
Children of this age are less inhibited. They are not afraid to be imaginative and they are
not yet bound by the constraints that demand that adults be logical. As they are so young, they
are notcarrying any negative attitudes left over from previous school experiences. They are
curious about everything, keen to learn, and very receptive. However, they can be selfish and
uncooperative. If they want something, they will push another child over to get it and show little
concern for the other child’s feelings. Some of them will use temper tantrums to try and get their
own way, and may...