Principles of Teaching English to Children

- what you and your pupils are doing in class. - what you want your pupils to do next. As stated in the beginning of this chapter, children in kindergarten are unique learners. Other experts also mention some characteristics of children for example Brewster and Ellis 2003:27. They state that children and adult have different learning style. Some of the characteristics of children are: a. Children have a lot of physical energy and often need to be physically active. It means that they have extra energy to move and play around with their body movement. Adult may never guest that children have another power to do many activities. b. Children are having a wide range of emotional needs. Children are sensitive. They can change quickly the emotional based on the situation so be careful to face the children. They may laugh and the cry in second. c. Children are very emotionally excitable. They are interested in something new that they never knew. For example the new activities they never do. d. Children are developing conceptually and at an early stage of their schooling. They develop their thinking about the concept of how they learn to school at very early. e. Children are still developing literacy in their first language. They develop the information of literature usually in their first language. Based on the characteristics mentioned by the experts above, the conclusion is that the teacher should focus on the technique of teaching that involve children with various activities so it can decrease the boredom. It is important for the teacher to use teaching media in the form of real objectspictures to attract children’s attention, understanding, and motivate them to learn. The teacher should focus on the topics themes, which is familiar to them. To know how effective the teaching and learning process that has been done by the educators, there is need an assessment. The assessments are not always in form of testing or examining into a formal test. There are many ways to assess the result or the performance of the children. Harmer 2001: 101-102 mentions several ways for the teachers how to assess the performance of their children. They are: 1. comments: by commenting the children performance happens at various stages both in and out of the class. The way we comments may say good, wonderful, well-done or that’s not quite right, you can do better. 2. marks and grades: awarding a mark of 910for a writing and B+ a speaking activity are clear indicators that children that children have done well. Good grade is often increasing their motivation positively, and vice versa. 3. reports: reports are given by the teacher to the children at the end of the year or when the program finishes. This report will summarize all the children performance during the program. It is important when writing report, the teacher gives a balance feedback, both positive and negative feedback of the children performance. Those ways of assessing the children can be used by the teachers after teaching and learning process. The assessment also can help the teacher to know whether the process of teaching and learning was as the plan on the track or not.

2. Song a. Definition of Song

In Indonesia, English is taught as a foreign language. Mostly students in Indonesia feel hard to learn English because its difficulties and the complexities. Gardner 1983 in Harmer 2001: 46 lists seven multiple intelligences that human have. One of the lists is musical or rhythmic. As we know, music and song has closely relationship. According to Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, “song is defined as short piece of music with words that can be sung”. Songs are abundant in themes and expressions which will echo in the learner’s heart. “Acquisition of automatic language skills depends on rich, meaningful, repeated exposure to comprehensible input without awareness” Bolitho et al in Shen 2009. The opportunities by using song can play an important role in the development of young children especially learning a foreign language. Songs are highly expressive. Some convey love and emotions; some tell a memorable and moving story. For children, they love songs, rhymes and chants, and their repetitive nature and rhythm make them as a best way for language learning Brewster, et al, 2003. Furthermore, Fai Li and Lo 1998 state that songs offer a change from the routine procedures in the classroom. By using songs, the teachers can easily teach the children fixed way in doing things the daily routine so the children can be