Teach English in Lǚting Zhen - Anqing Shi

Teaching EFL in a KindergartenI have heard from several different sources that teaching EFL to Kindergarten age children is one of the most rewarding EFL classes to teach. While there are many rewards in teaching younger students there are also many challenges you have to deal with that you would not deal with in an adult classroom. In this article I will highlight some of the challenges, strategies and rewards associated with teaching in Kindergarten. This is an important subject to me because I have taken a job teaching in a Kindergarten in Guangzhou China for next year. First, teaching in a Kindergarten will provide big challenges because the english level of the students will be so low. This will make explaining activities and lessons to them much more difficult. The strategy I will use to overcome these challenges will be organization and entertainment. I will work hard to make every class as organized and entertaining as I can, so that I hold the students attention and maximize class time. In spite of these challenges there will be great rewards, because I will see my teaching in everything the students learn. I have also learned that younger student?s pickup the language faster than adults so I will see more progress within my students. Second, the challenge of controlling the classroom and maintaining an open and fun learning environment will be another big challenge for me. It will be difficult to maintain a good balance between a fun classroom and a disciplined classroom. The strategies I will use to accomplish this are consistency and positive reinforcement. The most important thing to remember when dealing with control of a classroom, especially, with younger children is consistency. Young children are more sensitive to issues of fairness so you must be sure to treat everyone the same and only punish children when you need to. It is also important to give as much positive reinforcement as possible because that will encourage the children to enjoy studying english. The reward for this will be that I am responsible for laying the foundation of their future english learning. Finally, the biggest challenge of teaching in a Kindergarten will be teaching students a second language when they have not yet mastered there first language. This will require a lot of work on my part to make sure the students understand the lesson. They may not even understand the lesson if I were to give it in their mother language let alone in english. Some of the strategies I will use to overcome this challenge are being as animated as possible and by making the class as visually stimulating as possible. If I am able to act out certain vocabulary and help the children to learn in that way it will decrease the need to use their native language. In conjunction with that if I am able to use different kinds of visual aids it will help the children to learn english without using their native language. The rewards of teaching this low of a level will be when I see students who had no english language ability at the beginning of class leave my class knowing and using correctly different words and phrases I taught them. Overall I look forward to the challenges and rewards or teaching in a Kindergarten. I am sure it will be difficult at first but I know it will be worth it. I think this course has done a good job of familiarizing me with some of the challenges of teaching Kindergarten students as well as some of the strategies used to overcome them.