ESSAY: CHARACTERICTICS OF YOUNG LEARNERS

Many have agreed that English is such an important subject since it is used to communicate globally. It has been taught in every level of learners, even in primary level. People believe that teaching English in the early age has many advantages because young learners still have flexible minds and malleable tongues which help them learn English words easily. However, young learners are of course different with the adult ones in which the teacher should pay attention to their characteristics in order to make a better teaching and learning process.

Before we discuss about the characteristics, it is better to know the definition of young learners first. There are many definitions as stated by some experts. According to Purwaningsih, young learners are learners in elementary school aging nine to ten years old who are learning English as foreign language. While Etty Maryati Hoesein stated that young learners are the students of elementary school who are at grade four up to grade six. Their ages range from ten to twelve years of age. They have learned English for about one up to four years. From those definitions, we can conclude that young learners are children in the first six years of formal education, from the age six to twelve. It is because the lower limit of six roughly corresponds to the start of formal schooling in many countries, while the upper age of twelve approximates to a time when many children have begun to experience significant cognitive and emotional changes.

Children are very special in which they have their own characteristics that differ them from adult. They may lack on experience, but they have great reasoning ability. Whenever they find new things, they will make a reason based on their background knowledge they have. Because they are inexperience, sometimes it will lead them on misconceptions. That is why the teacher should be aware to anticipate childrens’ confusion and recognize why children have difficulties grasping new ideas.

Teacher should conduct teaching and learning activities based on young learners’ characteristics. These characterictics influence their ways of thinking, their aptitude, their attitude, etc. There are so many experts who give a list of yong learners’ characterictics, hence I will write some of them below.

According to Clark (1990: 6-8), here are five characteristics of young learners:

1.      Children are developing conceptually: they develop their way of thinking from concrete to the  abstract thing.

2.      Children have no real linguistics, different from the adult learners that already have certain purpose in learning language, they learn subject what school provide for them.

3.      Children are still developing; common skill such as turn talking and the use of body language.

4.      Young children very egocentric, they tend to resolve around themselves.

5.      Children get bored easily.

Meanwhile, Halliwel (1992: 3-5) stated that children are already very good in interpreting meaning without necessarily understanding the individual word, children already have great skill in using limited language creativity, children frequently learn indirectly rather than directly, children take good pleasure in finding and creating fun in what they do, and children have a ready imagination.

Brumfit (1997: v) gives a list of the characteristics which young learners share:

1. Young learners are only just beginning their schooling, so that teachers have a    major opportunity to mould their expectations of life in school.
2.  As a group, they are potentially more differentiated than secondary or adult learners, for they are closer to their varied home cultures, and new to the conformity increasingly imposed across cultural grouping by the school.
3. They tend to be keen and enthusiastic learners,
4. Their learning can be closely linked with their development of ideas and concepts, because it is so close to their initial experiences of formal schooling.
5. They need physical movement and activity as much as stimulation for their thinking, and the closer together these can be the better.

Young learners’ characteristics are also divided into three sides:

1.    Physical side

·      The physical world of young children is dominant and the understanding comes through hands, eyes and ears.

·      They perform physical activity in many ways; coloring, drawing and writing.

·      They are at the developing stage (critical period) in which they are capable of attaining native like second language because their organ of speech is still plastic.

2.    Social side

·      They are happy playing ad working in the company of others.

·      They are always aware of themselves in relation to others.

3.    Psychological side

·      They have short concentration span.

·      They are free of prejudice.

·      They get bored easily.

·      They are forgetful.

·      They like imitating.

·      They have high curiosity.

·      They are risk taker.

In conclusion, teacher should learn the characteristic of young learners whom she teaches because it will determine the success of language learning. By considering the characteristics that have mentioned above, hopefully teacher is able to choose the best teaching strategies so that young learners can understand the material well.

REFERENCES

Brumfit (1997) Young Learners Characteristics (TEYL/TMYL). (online) (http://peni.staff.uns.ac.id/2008/10/10/young-learner-characteristics/ accessed on March 9 , 2014).

Clark, J (1990) Teaching children: is it different? JET October 1990.

Halliwell, Susan (1992) Teaching English in the Primary Classroom. London: Longman.

Lecturing by Mrs. Dra.  Diani Nurhayati M.Pd. on March 10, 2014.

Prasetia, Cicik (2011) Teaching English for Young Learners. (online) (http://cicikprasetia.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/teaching-english-for-young-learners/ accessed on March 9, 2014)

ARTICLE RESPONSE FORM

Extensive reading is a type of reading for advance level. It doesn't try to get the meaning of a long text, but rather the meaning of its context. We can do it by re-reading the text for several times, taking note on important points, and then making a response.
Here is the example of response form of a research article.

ARTICLE RESPONSE FORM

Article title          : College Students’ Use of Affective and Social Language Learning   Strategies: A Classroom-Based Research.

Author                 : Marites B. Querol

Publisher              : Time Taylor International (Philippine ESL Journal, Vol.5)

Date published    : July 2010

Genre                   : Research article

Why did you decide to read this article?

Because I wanted to know more about language learning strategies, especially Affective Language Learning Strategies (ALLS) and Social Language Learning Strategies (SLLS), which might be able to be implemented in the classroom. I was also curious whether or not these strategies were used by the college students in Philippine and how the relationship between these two.

Were you glad that you decided to read it? Explain.

Yes, I was. After reading it, I got new knowledge that there were some strategies in learning a language that were very helpful in understanding the material better.  These strategies were very important for the successful of language learning.

What did you like best about this article?

This article provided tables as research findings which helped the readers to understand the given information more. The results were also completed with explanation and description so the information could be really convincing.

What did you like least?

The researcher didn’t give further explanation and example about the relationship between ALLS and SLLS, so the information seemed didn’t complete yet.

Would you recommend this article to a friend? Explain.

Yes, I would.  As I stated before that this article gave me new information about language learning strategies, as students majoring in English, these were essential to increase our comprehension of the language we learned. I hoped that this article would also help my friend both in processing new information and performing task.

On a scale of 1-10, how difficult was this article for you?

I thought the difficulty degree was 5 - intermediate. It was because although there were some unfamiliar words, but overall I could still understand this article.

And here is the summary...

SUMMARY

                 In learning a language, every learner used learning strategies to process the given information and do the tasks. This made some researchers conducted a study to investigate the use of Language Learning Strategies (LLS) among the students. Most of these studies were based on the idea that language was mean of communication in which the speaker and listener understood each other. Oxford (1990) divided the strategies into two; direct strategies consisting of memory strategies, cognitive strategies and compensation strategies, and indirect strategies which covered metacognitive strategies, affective strategies and social strategies. Current research result showed that the collaboration of two or more strategies would result better in learning. Furthermore, LLS was not only used in language learning, but also in science and technology. However, among these strategies, Affective Language Learning Strategies (ALLS), which focused on the learners’ feeling, and Social Language Learning Strategies (SLLS), which related to the social relationship with others, were less used. This became the basic reason on why this research was conducted. The researcher wanted to find out whether or not ALLS and SLLS were used by the college students in Philippine and the relationship between the two strategies. By using descriptive design, researcher observed 24 English college students of private university in Philippine and gave them questionnaires as the research instrument. Later on, the gathered data would be analyzed using descriptive statistic and Pearson correlation. The result showed that the students answered the given questionnaires in varied ways, but it could be concluded that both ALLS and SLLS were actually used by the students. But because every student had his/her own perspectives and preferences, so the strategies used were also different. The data also showed that there was a correlation between ALLS and SLLS as they expected to be observed as one. Since these strategies were still not optimized by the students, it was recommended to be integrated as part of the language skills. Learning strategy helped the learners to succeed on their language learning if it was used effectively. It could be done by training the students in using these strategies and also by popularizing them.