>
Sarah Phillips
Young Learners
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
OXFORD and OXFORD ENGLISH are registered trade marks of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Oxford University Press 1993
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 1993
2016 2015 2014 2013 2012
20 19 18
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press (with the sole exception of photocopying carried out under the conditions stated in the paragraph headed ‘Photocopying’), or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Photocopying
The Publisher grants permission for the photocopying of those pages marked ‘photocopiable’ according to the following conditions. Individual purchasers may make copies for their own use or for use by classes that they teach.
School purchasers may make copies for use by staff and students, but this permission does not extend to additional schools or branches
Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale
Any websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain and their addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information only. Oxford University Press disclaims any responsibility for the content
ISBN: 978 0 19 437195 7
This book is printed on paper from certified and well-managed sources.
Typeset by Wyvern 21 Ltd., Bristol, UK
Printed in China
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the many people who have, in one way or another, contributed to this book: readers, colleagues, teachers on courses, children I have taught, friends, and above all my parents John and Maria, and Angeles. Finally, I must thank Julia Sallabank, whose meticulous work on the manuscript has greatly added to the quality of the book.
The publisher and author would like to thank the following for their kind permission to use articles, extracts, or adaptations from copyright material. There might be instances where we have been unable to trace or contact the copyright holder before our printing deadline. We apologize for this and if notified the publisher will be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.
‘Happy birthday to you’ by Patty S. Hill and Mildred Hill © 1935 (renewed 1962), Summy Burchard Music, a division of Summy Burchard Inc., USA. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of Keith Prowse Music Pub. Co. Ltd., London WC2 0EA.
‘Ten little fingers’ by Pamela Conn Beall. Based on Wee Sing® – Children’s Songs and Fingerplays © 1977, 1985 by Pamela Conn Beall and Susan Hagen Nipp. Available from Price Stern Sloan, Inc. Publishers, Los Angeles, California.
‘Five little elephants’ by Yvonne Winer, from Of Frogs and Snails. Reproduced by kind permission of Belair Publications Ltd.
Illustrations by Oxford Illustrators Ltd.,
Ann Gowland, and Gwen Sallabank.
The author and series editor
Sarah Phillips trained as an English Language teacher at the Bell School, Norwich, and took her MA in ELT at Edinburgh University. She has held various teaching posts in Europe and has taught on primary teacher training courses with the Norwich Institute of Language Education. She has worked with the Regional Government of Galicia to prepare training courses and materials for teachers of English. She was part of a team that produced a video of children’s songs and games with LINGUA support. At the moment she is working on a textbook for children and teaching at the Instituto de Idiomas at the University of Santiago de Compostela. She is the author of Drama with Children, in this series.
Alan Maley worked for The British Council from 1962 to 1988, serving as English Language Officer in Yugoslavia, Ghana, Italy, France, and China, and as Regional Representative for The British Council in South India (Madras). From 1988 to 1993 he was Director-General of the Bell Educational Trust, Cambridge. From 1993 to 1998 he was Senior Fellow in the Department of English Language and Literature of the National University of Singapore. He is currently a freelance consultant and Director of the graduate English programme at Assumption University, Bangkok. His publications include Quartet (with Françoise Grellet and Wim Welsing, OUP 1982), Literature, in this series (with Alan Duff, OUP 1990), Beyond Words, Sounds Interesting, Sounds Intriguing, Words, Variations on a Theme, and Drama Techniques in Language Learning (all with Alan Duff), The Mind’s Eye (with Françoise Grellet and Alan Duff), and Learning to Listen and Poem into Poem (with Sandra Moulding). He is also Series Editor for the Oxford Supplementary Skills series.
Foreword
Interest in the teaching of English to younger learners has been steadily growing in recent years. This is no doubt partly in response to the rapidly growing demand for it to be taught at even younger ages by parents who want to provide their children with a competitive educational advantage.
It has found expression in the large numbers of private language schools catering to this age-group which have sprung up in many parts of the world. Ministries of Education too have begun to respond, with large-scale expansion of provision for foreign language teaching at primary levels in countries such as France and Italy. The need for good materials is all the more pressing, given the minimal standards of many private schools, and the inadequate provision of trained teachers and suitable materials for the state systems. Yet the demand for English keeps on growing.
The growth of primary English has, moreover, had the effect of a ‘shot in the arm’ for the TEFL ‘profession’. TEFL has tended to develop separately from the mainstream of educational thought and practice. There has, for example, been rather little cross-fertilization between TEFL and the teaching of other foreign languages. While this has undoubtedly enabled TEFL to develop some highly innovative and valuable practices and procedures of its own, ultimately such isolation is damaging and can lead to a comfortable parochialism.
The awakening of interest in teaching young learners offers TEFL one way back into the mainstream of education. Teachers of young learners need special skills, many of which have little to do with the language, which becomes a by-product of learning activities rather than a centrepiece. Helping the child to learn and develop becomes more important than simply teaching the language. The approach and techniques are therefore drawn from good general educational theory and practice rather than from a narrow TEFL repertoire.
Many EFL teachers wishing