The English Teaching Strategies For Young Learners

The teaching strategies deal with the teaching preparation of English lessons in the school including curriculum, documents, teacher professional development, and students' seat arrangement. The school implements three kinds of curricula -JSIT Curriculum, 2013 Curriculum, and Cambridge Primary Curriculum. They implement those three curricula because they want to achieve their purposes as stated in their vision and mission.

However, the implementation of those three curricula has some differences in terms of school subjects. The subjects of the JSIT Curriculum include Islamic religion subjects such as Qur'an, Fiqh, and Islamic history. 2013 Curriculum covers all thematic subjects. Cambridge Primary Curriculum includes the three subjects: Science, English, and Math.

Therefore, the English subject that we discuss here refers to Cambridge Primary Curriculum, -an international curriculum from England. This curriculum is a well-designed curriculum as it provides all the teaching guide for teaching young learners including curriculum development and classroom teaching and learning. The students are provided with an exciting educational journey that helps them to become learners who are confident, responsible, reflective, innovative and engaged. Apart from that, the students are also facilitated with an official certificate from Cambridge International to allow them continuing their next academic level. 

During the research conducted, there were fifteen strategies implemented in teaching English to grade 5 of the international primary school. The first strategy is Ice Breaking. The implementation of ice breaking in the middle of the day becomes an effective strategy to help the students get rid of their boredom. The choice of singing and dancing activity by the teacher in this strategy engages the students’ interest and gets their focus into the learning process.

The second strategy is Recalling memory. Recalling memory is like an aid for the students to remember the previous knowledge that they have learned in the previous meeting. Sometimes some of the students forget the material that is learned in the last week. Therefore, the teacher implementing the recalling memory strategy is accommodating in the learning process.

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The third strategy is Brainstorming. As stated by Suyanto (2008), brainstorming is a technique to generate an idea. Here, the teacher will come up with a topic and students will carry out their idea which is related to the topic. The teacher conducted this strategy at the beginning of the lesson by delivering several questions to the students related to the materials. By this means, the students' curiosity towards the new topic is increased and their critical thinking skill is also improved. Besides, the teacher giving questions that relate to the students' life is successful in getting their focus on the learning process.

The next strategy implemented by the teacher is Class Discussion. This strategy includes questioning and inquiry technique. The teacher delivered a question to the students, asked them to analyze certain information and summarized the material into a conclusion. This is following Suyanto (2008); he says that questioning, analyzing and concluding are used in questioning and inquiry techniques. The questions delivered by the teacher to the students were able to encourage the students' critical thinking. Besides, this strategy facilitates the students to easily understand the material and have much more time to actively express their idea in answering the teacher's questions. Therefore, the students' speaking ability is increased. This is in line with the statement from Suyanto (2008) that question and answers session is effective to increase students' knowledge, skills, and understanding.

Another strategy in is game. The games conducted by the teacher were in the form of group competition and movement that dealt with language grammar. The group competition game was proven capable of increasing the students' participation and enthusiasm. They confidently represented themselves in creating some sentences orally. While the movement game which included listen and move activities, helped the students to learn the material less stressful with pleasurable activity. This strategy is the same as listen and do, a technique that is declared by Suyanto (2008). He explained that listen and do is one of teaching technique that is suitable for young learners.

Furthermore, this movement game is included in the Total Physical Response (TPR) method. In obedience to Larsen, Freeman, and Anderson (2016), the teacher can make the language learning more enjoyable and less stressful by conducting Total Physical Response (TPR).

The sixth strategy is Listen and Read. In this strategy, the students both listened to the audio which was played twice by the teacher, and read the text of the audio which was provided in the textbook at the same time. This strategy helps the students to recognize the correct pronunciation of each word in the text. By discussing some of the vocabularies in the text, the students can also understand clearly the author intention of writing the text.

The seventh strategy is Listen and Match. In this activity, every student had pictures of certain figures on their hands. They listened to the audio twice and directly matched the pictures with some categorization based on the audio. So here, the students did not have any text of the audio displayed. By having this kind of listening techniques, the students were trained to have both competences, to listen to certain information and match the information needed with the pictures simultaneously.

Draw and Write becomes another strategy used by the teacher in delivering English lessons. The teacher asked the students to draw certain pictures and write brief information below the pictures using sentences based on the material the students have learned. By conducting this strategy, the students were facilitated with interesting activity in learning and were helped to apply the knowledge they have learned into real practice. As stated by Suyanto (2008), drawing activity is one technique that is suitable to be conducted for young learners in learning the English language.

Write Paragraph is one of the strategies implemented by the teacher in teaching English. The teacher asked the students to write a paragraph or more describing certain issues after the main material has been understood by the students. By holding this strategy, the students could apply directly the knowledge they have learned before and developed their writing competence into real practice.

Those two writing activities above are by the statement of Shin (2011: 3 - 4). She conveyed that children age seven to twelve years old are learning to write. Therefore, the teacher’s consideration in applying those activities is appropriate.

The use of Filling the Blank strategy helps the students to practice and strengthen their understanding of the language grammar they have learned in the classroom into some exercises. The teacher asked the students to answer the incomplete sentences using the words provided in the box. Besides, the discussion of filling the blank exercise is full in English. This is in line with Larsen, Freeman, and Anderson (2016). They state that filling the blank exercise is suitable to be conducted in the direct method which is the whole language used in the learning process is the target language.

The eleventh strategy was Vocabulary Writing. After the teacher delivering the materials that contain rare and new vocabulary for the students, the teacher asked the students to write them in a certain book named assignment book. It was a book for students writing down their vocabulary that they just knew. The book contains four columns. The first column is for the name of the vocabulary. The second column is for the meaning in the Indonesia language. The third column is for the part of speech of the words. Finally, the fourth column is for students applying the words into sentences. This strategy helps the students to record their new vocabulary and apply it into a sentence.

The twelfth strategy in the teaching implementation was Concluding Material. The teacher usually applies this strategy at the end of the material explanation. This strategy becomes an effective way to help the students have the strength and precise understanding of the main focus of certain material.

Police of English is the next strategy that is organized directly in the school daily activities. By conducting this strategy, the teacher is helped by the four students of the class who become the police that controls students' activity all in English. If a student breaks the rules, he will be given a certain warning card from the police and a consequence from the teacher. Besides the students are demanded with this rule, they will get used to doing all of their activities in English so that the school vision can be obtained.

Reading Time is another effective strategy organized by the school. It is a kind of reading for pleasure activity which is conducted once a week. According to Goctu (2016), reading for pleasure can build positive attitudes towards learning English as a foreign language. The students develop automaticity and improve meaning construction as they read a large amount of the materials. Compared to this theory, the implementation of the reading time activity can encourage the students' vocabulary mastery and their reading interests. They can learn new things by reading a certain story or information. Therefore, they will have a wider knowledge.

Based on the interview with the teacher, English Camp is conducted to assist and upgrade the students' English competence through a real practice in real life. According to Wighting, Nisbet, and Tindall (2005), English camp is effective in teaching spoken English. On findings, the students were demanded to be capable to communicate using English in all activities during the camp. the language that is allowed to be used in this camp is English only. If a student gets caught speak in Bahasa or Javanese, he/she will get a consequence. As a result, the students have a new experience using English in all aspects of their life during the camp and their English speaking competence was enhanced.

The last strategy in the teaching implementation was named Assembly Assembly is a kind of students' performance which is held once a semester. In this activity, the students' English speaking skill is supported. They can show any speaking performance such as drama, singing, reading poem or others which is based on their interest and expertise. As a consequence, through implementing this strategy, students’ interest and students’ speaking confidence can be increased.

In general, the teacher employs several different English teaching strategies in the teaching implementation. It means that the teacher tries to give the best learning experience to the students in the way of improving their English ability. She does not want the students feeling bored and less enthusiasm because there is no miscellaneous activity in the learning process. This is regarding Suyanto (2008: 18), he states that young learners easily get bored and have a short attention span. Therefore, different kinds of activities should be conducted so that students will enjoy and be more motivated in learning a language.