New Perspectives in Science Education

Teaching a foreign language to very young children has been an increasingly dominant trend in this rapidly globalizing world. The most common foreign language in Turkey is English which in public schools is taught from 2nd grade. However English is taught as a main subject in private kindergartens and elementary schools of Turkey. Like any other children around the world Turkish students accept new foreign languages easily, but they get bored very fast if the teacher is teaching them using the old traditional methods and techniques. The study overviews the teaching of English vocabulary through games to young learners in this case to kindergarten students. This will be a report of an observation conducted at a Private kindergarten in Ankara. The participants for this study were one teacher and fifteen students. The result of this research will be useful for teachers of the kindergarten level in the EFL context to help them improve their performance in teaching and eliminate the stress factor from classrooms in learning foreign languages at a very young age.

Keywords: vocabulary teaching and learning, vocabulary games, kindergarten.

References:
[1] Asher, J., & Ben, S. P. (1967). The learning strategy of Total Physical Response: Some Age Differences. Child Development, 38(4), 1219-1227.
[2] Butler Y.G. (2009). Teaching English to young learners: The influence of global and local factors. In J. Enever, J. Moon, & U. Raman (Eds.), Young learner English language policy and implementation: International perspectives (pp. 23–29). Reading, UK: Garnet Education. P. 88-89
[3] Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching languages to young learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.