TYL event - Teaching English to Young Learners Today: The Singapore Experience

This event, sponsored by Tokyo JALT and the TYL SIG, is for teachers of kids to young adults, so teachers of preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, and senior high school, are all encouraged to come! As always, there will be great presentations and lots of time for discussion and networking.

Abstract:

The presentation will first begin with an overview of some of the widely accepted principles for teaching English to young learners. There is general agreement among ELT experts and practitioners that young learners seem to learn best when they are immersed in highly interesting and accessible language, when they get to practice the language in a fun and engaging way and when they get to use the target language for meaningful interactions. They also believe that while some attention to language forms may be needed, the bulk of classroom instruction should be used to expose young children to rich and meaningful language. 

The second part of the presentation will illustrate how these language learning principles play out in a national English language curriculum for young learners in Singapore. Typically starting with receptive skills (e.g., listening to and/or reading highly interesting stories), the learning sequence then extends to productive skills (i.e., speaking and writing), all the while couching the learning in a rich language environment that aims to build greater fluency and enjoyment.

Speaker Bios:

Dr Willy A Renandya is a language teacher educator with extensive teaching experience in Asia. He currently teaches applied linguistics courses at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has given numerous presentations at international ELT conferences and has published extensively in the area of second language education. His publications include Language Teaching Methodology: An anthology of current practice (2002, Cambridge University Press) and Student-centred cooperative learning (2019, Springer International). He maintains a large teacher professional development forum called Teacher Voices: https://www.facebook.com/groups/teachervoices/.

Website: Willy’s ELT Corner https://www.willyrenandya.com

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com.sg/citations?user=gHW1fVIAAAAJ

Dr Donna Lim is a lecturer with the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She specialises in primary English Language (EL) methodology courses. Her interest area is in developing literacy with a focus on teaching writing. She has considerable teaching experience with young learners and finds it fulfilling to work with schools to enhance EL teaching and learning.