Primary education

Pupil’s age: 7-13

Level: beginners/basic/

Method used most commonly when teaching: impossible to distinguish any, teachers use multiple methods mixed up


Characteristics of age group.

Within this particular group we can distinguish two sub groups: young learners (1-3) and primary schoolers (4-6). Young learners are basically children who just came into contact with foreign language and primary school students have some basic experience in language learning, know very basic structures and vocabulary and are acquainted with pronunciation and sentence patters.

Pupils in primary school require specific skills from teacher. They are still children so they’d rather play or have fun than study something as ‘boring’ as English. Thus teachers’ role is essential in this case. Teacher should completely direct the lesson, lead his pupils and help them whenever they need a help. Teacher must not require pupils to understand whatever he or she is saying and accept it. He, on the other hand, should rather come up with compromise and be prepared for any hardships along the way. All the exercises should be connected with pupils interests so that they could focus on them for more than just a five minutes. Those exercises should also be rather simple and not very demanding: like repetition, feeling gaps, singing songs.
Older pupils, although would still enjoy simple and funny tasks are older and require more attention. They start to recognize and recall information that they learned before so it’s easier for the teacher to come up with new exercises and extend syllabus.

The most essential part of the lesson turns out to be introduction. Good, entertaining or non entertaining introduction to the lesson defines whether pupils will continue to listen with interest or get bored and do something else. It is also vital for teacher to be extremely patient as dealing with children can at times be really demanding and painful.

During the classes, generally speaking, L1 language should not be used so that process of acquiring would not be interrupted. However handful of teachers still refer to their pupils in native to give them simple commands or to answer their needs.

Use of methods

As we are dealing with children most teachers chooses either grammar-translation method or direct approach. It is also vital to add that not a single teacher uses just one method. Most of them mix up different parts of methods to achieve certain objective.

In case of the young learners teachers choose to explain most rules in native language instead of letting children induce some patters. It is understandable since children tend to learn indirectly rather than directly and thus letting them just memorize is better idea then asking to come up with something, especially if the children find it boring. Explanation always is followed by the use of realia. Pupils must always know that what they’re studying is a need, that it can be used outside classroom environment. Teacher here always serves as a model, a figure that is to be followed, thus children repeat obediently after teacher making awful lot of mistakes but as long as they keep up it seems to be fine.

The other thing is implementation of other senses into classes. Children, and especially the youngest one tend to behave in an extraordinary and unpredictable way. In consequence the atmosphere is dense, lesson seems a bit chaotic and unorganized. In order to prevent such cases teachers decide to use all senses when learning particular parts of syllabus. Sometimes It really looks funny and bizarre when 30-year-old woman jumps to show the action of lifting the body up to her pupils who do as she says and learn new vocabulary, in this case verb to jump in the process.

Gross of teachers use different kinds of drills when teaching. Sometimes they repeat particular word 10 or more times but it all pays back in the future. That’s because young learners have the tendency to learn quickly and forget quickly. With this, the process of learning is meaningless. Thus teachers constantly repeat already known vocabulary or structure to ensure that students memorized it and know how to use it in context.

Lots of games and very engaging activities are used during the classes. For pupils learn the best when learning comes with fun and joy. For that reason teachers bring a lot of different realia, games, quizzes and other sorts of things to ensure that students would not get bored.



My own thoughts and opinion:

I especially enjoyed observing this particular age group because of the demands that the group brings forth to its teacher. One must always remain active, switch from one methodological method to another, in a way adapt. Although teacher remains a superior character it is the children that are to be taught in the classroom. Being a teacher in such a group requires not only superb background knowledge and experience in dealing with children but also, or should I say most importantly, lots, and I mean lots of patience... This too brings me to the conclusion: nervous and overreactive people should not be teachers...

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