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127. How to teach English to children online Online teaching is a fast-growing form of language acquisition in recent years. Teaching online, in general, differs from teaching in a classroom and there are many things you cannot do online, like use a group or a pair work if you are teaching to a group of people, many great and common games and ice-breakers, and yet these “restrictions” open up the road to creativity. Just like in a classroom setting, also online a student may learn the four language skills – reading, writing, listening and speaking. When it comes to teaching young children online, a teacher has to consider many aspects that make teaching different than for adults. This is the same as for teaching online, so for teaching in a classroom or one-on-one. In this essay I am going to discuss such aspects as the age, age characteristics, length of the lesson, specific interests, pace of learning, discipline, motivation, need for a movement that is important for the successful delivery of an e-lesson to children. The age and age characteristics of children, above all, is the first most important aspect. Young learners can be at a very different age range, from the age of 2 till 18 years because a child, according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1988, is defined as anyone who has not reached their 18th birthday. Within the limits of this age range children experience rapid growth, cognitive, social and emotional development. Therefore it is of paramount importance to consider the children’s age and abilities because if a teacher has to teach children of younger age who cannot read yet, there is no use to present them a reading task as we would do it to older students. It is essential for a teacher to understand the young learners’ characteristics in their cognitive, linguistic and emotional aspects to build an e-lesson and make sure that the children are fully involved in the e-learning process. The main age characteristics to be considered are as follows : - short attention span, - high level of activity, - responsiveness to praise, - a different experience of language, - less shy than older learners, - imagination, - learning through play, - enjoy imitating and mimicking. Accordingly, in planning online lesson teachers should vary their techniques to break the boredom, like giving them varied activities such as handwriting, songs, games and activities which relate to the different senses. A teacher should encourage students, when appropriate, and praise their work. Treat them as a unit, don’t favor those who know some English at the expense of those who do not know. Ask them to repeat utterances, resort to mechanical drills. Use realia or pictures to teach new vocabulary related to concrete meanings. Young learners learn best when they learn through games, thus games should be an essential part of online teaching. Length of the lesson is a very important aspect: no 6-year-old will sit through an online lesson for 45 minutes. Normally a lesson would be 20-25 minutes long. Activities should be short. However, young learners will perceive information as long as it is funny enough. Child’s specific interests are something any teacher can use to attract a child’s attention, when needed, or even build a topic around this specific theme of interest. For example, if a child goes through a dinosaur phase and a teacher knows it, he/she can prepare a song about dinosaurs or images with dinosaurs. This is a great help in times of need. The pace of learning for young learners is slower than for older learners; however, young learners bring more enthusiasm and energy to the online class. When tutoring online, a teacher should speak slower, in a louder voice, with exaggerated intonation etc. Discussing discipline for children teaching online seems almost ridiculous, like sand falling through fingers. Still, there are tools and ways how to maintain a good focus: when things get out of hand use the afore-mention “child’s specific interests” card; start a movement game in front of the computer etc. It makes us conclude that a teacher always has to have something in store for moments of poor discipline and focusing. The motivation for young learners in most cases is poor or there is none because most likely parents pushed them into learning English, that is why a teacher has to find a way how to make the presentation attractive, find out the child’s needs and interests and respond to them. Need for movement is important and the teacher’s presence on the other side of the computer makes it difficult in terms of showing the movement, correcting the child, guiding the group of children in one direction or the other, but there is a solution with simple movement games. The teacher has to set up an adequate teaching environment, free of distractions. To sum up, teaching English to children online is not an easy task due to the lack of teacher’s presence, however, having a truly creative and innovative approach to lesson planning and considering all of the above-mentioned aspects, age characteristics among them, it is possible to make this process effective and unique.
