join in the action, 6 children talk their heads off, and 7 children feel at home. In the end of the book chapter, Moon 2006, p.
14 emphasizes that “children do not learn in just one way, but use all the different ways mentioned by teachers.
However, children can only make use of these means if you develop the right kind of learning environment”. She explains the learning environment as the one
having enough exposure to various meaningful input, providing an atmosphere where learners feel free to take risks and experiment, providing an opportunity for
learners to use the language to communicate with the teacher and other classmates and also to obtain feedback on their learning.
Brown 2001 clarifies the nature of children in five categories. First, as previously mentioned, children cannot grasp abstract talks since they are usually
still in the concrete operations stage. Second, children have short attention spans to something considered to be boring. It suggests that children are more focused
on the language for here and now and alo have a lot of natural curiousity. Third, children‟s all five senses need to be stimulated so that they can be engaged in a
lesson. Fourth, children are sensitive. Brown 2001, p. 89 believes that “Children
are in many ways much more fragile than adults. Their egos are still being shaped, and therefore the slightest nuances of communication can be negatively
interpreted”. Lastly, children concern on a new language that can be used for here and now. In other words, children have little appreciation to language tha does not
have immediate benefit for them.
b. Teaching English to Elementary School Students
A careful selection of teaching approaches for young learners is a necessary. Six approaches commonly used to teach English to children in primary
schools Brewster, Ellis, Girard, 2002 are briefly explained here. The first approach, audio-lingual, involves the use of repetition of new language which is
often based on dialogues. Regardless its teaching-centered and out-dated state, this approach comes in modified versions that can be found in some countries.
The next approach is total physical response TPR, a teaching approach that involves activity and movement thus it does not force young learners to speak. It
develops listening skills and introduces new language in a very visual and contextualized way. The communicative approach is an approach emphasizing the
social nature of language learning and interaction. For children, this means that teachers engage learners in drawing, acting out, listening, talking, reading, or
writing based on meaningful and contextualized tasks using the languages that have been prepared. The fourth approach, Task-based learning TBL, is an
attempt to improve on the communicative approach by trying to balance accuracy with fluency and by encouraging more authentic output from learners Skehan in
Brewster, Ellis, Girard 2002. It covers three phases: pre-task preparation, the task itself, and language focus. The fifth approach is story-based methodology.
Wright and Garvie in Cameron 2001 mention that stories are frequently claimed to bring many benefits to young learner classrooms, including language
development. The last approach, cross-curricular, links second language to other areas of the curriculum such as Art, Physical Education, Mathematics, or Nature
Study. Young learners in an English as a foreign language class listen to various
kinds of text. Most often, they listen to their English teacher‟s talking, singing, chanting, dramatizing, dialogues, giving instructions, and telling stories Pinter,
