16 greatly. They learn to interact with peers, to deal with hospitality and dominance,
to learn to be leader so as to lead others, to deal with social problem and to develop a concept of self.
At the age between 5 and 7, children develop their ability to take part in small group task by which they learn to cooperate and share and take turns with
others. At this period, they might start to develop feelings of independence but they still feel anxious when separated from familiar people or places.
When children are around 11 years of age, they have become sociable and like to spend time with friends of the same sex and their ability to work and play
with other keep developing. They appear relatively calm, with short-lived moments of anger, sadness or depression. They often are able to hide feeling of
their anxiety that they behave and act over confident. At this period, they are defining themselves in terms of their physical characteristics and their likes and
dislikes. They are sensitive to criticism and their feeling of success or failure is dependent on how adults and peers respond to them.
Children of the age 5 to 12 years are in a sensitive and unstable emotional condition, therefore the assessment or test should be familiar and use texts of
familiar content, such as home and family, school, and simple genre like children’s stories and folktales Mc Kay, 2006: 10.
c. Physical Growth
Children physical growth is characterized by continuing and rapid development of gross and fine motor skills Mc Kay, 2006: 10. From the age of
17 5 to 7, they develop their ability to move around, such as climbing, balancing,
running and jump. Their fine motor skill which involves developments in hand– eye coordination such as handling writing tools, using scissors is also increasing.
In on going development progress, children, at this age, develop their ability to hold thinner pens, drawing finer pictures and building intricate models. They are
very active, tiring easily and recovers quickly. Therefore, they may tire more easily from sitting than from running. They love physical activities, are
enthusiastic and lively that they enjoy to play and to engage in fantasy and fun.
By the time they are 9 to 12 years age, children’s hand-eye coordination grows better than when they are 7 or 8 years old. Their large muscle coordination
develops gradually to speed and accuracy in running, climbing, throwing and catching activities.
Physical development needs to be considered particularly with regard to tiredness, ability to sit still during and hand-eye coordination the test or
assessment. Tasks which involve physical activity to accompany the language related response such as moving, pointing, circling or coloring in a picture will
help to encourage children to complete the task, especially for those in the early grades. Children in the upper elementary school are more able to respond without
such requirement Mc Kay, 2006: 10.
d. Literacy reading and writing ability
The most noticeable characteristic of young learners in language learning compared to older learners is that they are still learning literacy skills and
18 understandings at the same time as they are learning the target language. Literacy
skills include children’s writing and reading ability.
The general expectations of literacy development of a child in learning their first language can be seen in figure below:
5–7 years
Are continuing to develop a sense of how writing and reading work
Combine drawing and writing to convey ideas
Understand that ‘prints’ tells the story
Develop a basic vocabulary of personal words
Read slowly and deliberately
Will substitute words that makes sense when reading
7–9 years
Begin to understand and use writing and reading for specific purpose
May combine drawing and writing but writing can
stand alone to convey meaning
Develop a rapidly increasing vocabulary of sight words
Begin to self-correct errors
Develop the ability to read silently
Increase ability to read aloud fluently and with
expression
9–11 years
Can expand thinking more readily through writing and reading
Continue to increase reading vocabulary
Continue to self-correct errors
Read silently with increased speed and comprehension
silent reading speed greater than oral speed may result in oral reading difficulties
11–13 years
Continue to expand thinking readily through writing and reading
Continue to increase silent reading rate and time spent
at reading
Continue to increase ability adjust rate and reading to suit purpose skim, scan, select, study
Continue to broaden their interests in a variety of
Table 1.1. Widely held Expectations of literacy development Puckett and Black, 2000, 100 cited by Mc Kay 2006: 12
19 fiction and non-fiction
Begin to understand that people may interpret the same
material in different ways
Mc Kay 2006: 11 states that a defining characteristic of literacy development is that children should have developed their understanding about
how reading and writing work before they start school. These understandings establish the foundation of literacy. She gives an example that as skills of
decoding and whole word recognition and knowledge discourse organization start to develop from reading slowly to read aloud and silently then to ability of reading
for information or pleasure. In the early years, they convey messages through writing with the help of drawing and catch messages through pictures. The
development of children’s writing skill counts on their progress in fine-motor skills, ability to remember words and spelling, and ability to combine words in
sentences and paragraphs.
When children are in age of between 7 and 9, they start to do self-correct and convey messages through writing.
By the end of elementary school or about 12 years old, children are able to write in ways that expand their thinking and to write in required form or genre.
They are also able to read various fiction and non-fiction and start to develop their critical literacy skills.
An interesting point which is shown by the outline of expected progress in table 1.1, is that children have started reading and writing when they are between
5 and 7 with well-developed oral abilities in their first language. Children’s oral
20 language underpins their literacy development in their first language. During their
elementary school, they develop their ability to interact conversationally with many people in different situations, goal and topics. They have developed to an
ability of talking and discussing about familiar topics such as home, family, school and broaden topics as they experience more with the world which require
greater cognitive and linguistic abilities than conversational interaction such as narrative, argument, description, instruction and opinions.
For secondforeign language learners, literacy knowledge from their first language is a big support in their learning of reading and writing in the target
language, although sometimes a different script can contradict this advantage. Therefore, Ioannou 2003: 68 says that writing in a foreign language for young
learners is difficult. It requires a mastery of a number of language areas such as spelling, grammar, vocabulary and other skills such as handwriting and
punctuation. For most young learners writing is usually not a favorite activity. Therefore, writing activities should be made creative, communicative and
enjoyable. It is very crucial for young learners whose primary motivation for learning foreign or second language is not passing an exam as the adults’. They
are ‘moved’ because they are interested in the language that is on what they can do with it, and how much fun they have in their language learning. With such
characterization, Ioannou 2003:69 suggests that tasks for assessing young learners’ writing abilities should represent realistic and authentic situation and
generate interest and enjoyment. Mc Kay 2006:14 also points out that the
knowledge children’s literacy skill is important to determine appropriate choice of
21 tasks such as the texts which are used for reading, the expectations in writing and
the judgments about the nature of progress of student’s performance in the tasks.
e. Vulnerability
