Teaching English to Children: Tips and Advice

Teaching English to children is not something this blogger does. I’ve managed to avoid it for the most part during my short teaching career – my student base remains largely at the post-adolescent level.

Kindergarten sensei

A friend who teaches English at a kindergarten told me what it’s like to teach the little people. At worst, it seems the role of teacher is in many ways devolved to baby sitter. Classes often have targets such as ‘maintain attention’ or ‘be entertaining’ rather than any educational goals. Singing the Hokey Cokey everyday at work, as fun as it sounds, probably becomes rather tiresome eventually.

Being too educational

While it may not be the most noble of objectives, many English schools are happy to keep things that way. The teacher mentioned earlier has tried several times to implement more educational themes and goals into the lessons. Not only did it not sit well with the children (who surely have become accustomed to hearing the hokey cokey everyday and would lash out at the possibility of it coming to an end) but also superiors at the school told him to keep the lessons fun.

Tips for teaching ‘kids’

Teaching English to children is big business here in Japan. In my local neighborhood alone there are about 5 English schools exclusively for ‘kids’ (a term my primary school English teacher taught me to detest due to its etymology – “children is the correct word, dear boy”). So no doubt many of you out there are teaching young learners (not ‘younger learners’ – why do we add –er to everything these days? Who are we comparing it too? Sorry, I’ll stop ranting now!). With that in mind, here are some top tips to help you on your way.

• Stay positive – be enthusiastic and fun yourself, and your student will follow suit by being interested in what you have to say.

• Be ready to adapt – an activity that you have planned might not go down as well you hoped. Don’t let it spoil the lesson. Move onto something new and analyse what went wrong later.

• Over-prepare rather than under-prepare – there’s always a chance that your lesson plan will not take as much time as you anticipated. The last thing you want is a classroom full of bored children with nothing to teach them!

• Try out new things – there are lots of different ways to teach children, from storytelling to songs, and from picture dictionaries to powerpoint presentations.