The Future of Education

Preschool institutions across European countries often implement foreign language instruction in their curriculum. The amount of classroom hours is often very limited, sometimes to just one hour per week. The number of children in the foreign language class may vary from a few learners to over twenty learners. There are also other factors that affect the learning process, for instance, the presence of a native speaker and, above all, the teaching techniques and strategies used in the foreign language classroom. The present paper offers some practical tips for teaching a foreign language to very young learners in an effective way. They are based on empirical findings from a two-year EFL project in a preschool institution in Lower Austria. The activities used during the English lessons aimed at creating a natural speaking environment and providing learners with the opportunity to learn English in a natural way, as if they were learning their mother tongue. The goal of the project was to achieve sequential bilingualism of the learners. English was the only language used during the lessons and a wide spectrum of teaching methods and classroom activities were used to enhance learning with remarkably positive results.

Keywords: Effective teaching techniques, foreign languages, natural speaking environment, very young learners;