Assignment 2: Literature review
Deadline: Week 12, Friday, 18th December, 2015 (on-line submission) Length: 3000 words
Weighting 70%
Choose ONE of the three titles below:
1. EFL teachers who wish to move from other levels to work with young children have a major orientation to undertake with regard to their expectations of teaching – at least as great a change as for an experienced primary school teacher learning a new language (Brumfit 1991). Discuss the changes in approach that must be made by an EFL teacher used to working with teenagers or adults.
2. Through stories and drama, children develop understanding of themselves and the world around them, (Read, 2007:114) There are various approaches to using stories in class. Discuss these approaches to highlight how story telling can be a useful vehicle for organizing a Foreign Language programme for young learners. In your discussion, you should refer to specific skills which would be required on the part of the teacher. You should support your arguments, where necessary, with examples from popular story books or children’s plays you are familiar with, or those covered in the course.
3. Learning to learn is the most important aspect of children’s overall educational development. As a vitally important part of their education, children need to develop awareness, strategies and attitudes that will enable them to constantly adapt to change and meet new learning challenges competently and confidently in a life-long way (Read, 2007). Discuss this statement taking into account the main aims and objectives of the primary school curriculum.
4. It is important for teachers to be familiar with the universal aspects of children’s development; however, it is equally important that this is balanced out with focus on the individual child. Discuss and exemplify, with reference to educational and psychological theories about how children learn. Analyze these theories and discuss:
(i) how they relate to good practice in the teaching of a foreign language to primary school children; (ii) how children are very different as individuals with their strengths and weaknesses as learners; (iii) how primary school curriculum, and the teachers, can take these differences into account to enhance children’s learning.
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