TO ALL TESLIANs SEMESTER 2 TIPS 2 FOR FINAL EXAM 2012 LGA3101 CHILDRENS LITERATURE.

Adjusting Pedagogical Principles For Young Learners with Fiction, Non-Fiction and Poetry. So, how do you know if you had chosen a suitable text to be shared with your young learners. What were the considerations? Were you thinking of their interest, their culture, their language level, the values you would like to instill and the language potential the text could serve these young learners. We begin with their interest which by far the most important as only what is believable and meaningful could draw interest in them. And this is preserved in their schemata as again they come to school not empty minded. Their environment had influenced them in such a way that only what make sense to them would trigger their curiousity. Between boys and girls, there tend to be differences, but when it comes to topics like friendship, poverty, divorce, abuse, ambition etc they seem to be sharing. They are no longer gender-biased issues. Even adults also are experiencing them. Take poverty for instance. Your plan is to share with them the topic, to make them realise that it is natural that they are experiencing it, that poverty is the case with the others also. The text you are about to choose or create is supposed to draw them nearer to the issue. You being the presenter of the text should be able to get them to identify with the issue. These young learners sense that meaningfully through your presentation to which you blend with illustrations (as you are using a picture book) and your expressive language. As they are of concrete learners (operational), whatever they see they believe. And your way of telling them sustain their attention. Their schemata is activated and they would want more in the lesson. Capitalising their home language to the very extent supports their understanding as whatever appears to correlate with minds will bring understanding (comprehensible input). Recycle their home language vocabulary. There are certain language properties that humans share universally. Make full use of this so-called Universal Grammar (UG) in your ESL classroom. Make it a habit to be contextual and schematic in your planning. Oops! You are getting a bit confused, I know. Lets go back to the topic/issue that we had chosen, that is poverty. Say that, majority of your young learners are poor or of low-income. Now the story-telling session begins.

Arman and Dilla are brothers and sisters. Pak Halim is their father. Their mother passed away 3 years ago. Pak Halim works as a rubber tapper. Everyday he earns about RM15. The money is not enough for him and his children. Arman is a good pupil. He is now in Year 5. His sister Dilla is also doing well. They walk to school everyday. It takes them 30 minutes. Pak Halim only gives them 50 sen a day. They do not spend the money. They save it to buy stationery. At school they never eat at the canteen. They only take their food at home.

You enter class equipped with a big book of the above text. You would want them to identify that they are not alone, that there are others who are going through the same hardship. To draw these young learners to the issue, you show the book title and prompt them for responses. As they are of low-income background, the cover picture itself invites them to the topic, the picture of a boy and a girl who are walking to school wearing old torn school uniforms. Page by page you flip and they get to see the illustrations and the lines describing the story. Expressively you read, enlivening the lines with appropriate speech patterns (prosody). You pause your reading where you feel necessary as young learners have short attention span. Try other strategies that could sustain their reading motivation. Two most practical strategies are jazz chant or poetry. You are now twinning the text, integrating poetry and fiction to prolong these young learners reading endeavour. Hope you succeed. Just take a good look at the vocabulary used in the text. The words are in their schemata. It is just that the words are in their home language, murid for pupil which is a noun; passed away for meninggal dunia which is a phrasal verb; they for mereka which is a pronoun and the list goes on. Universal Grammar (UG) is now in action. You are relating their home language vocabulary with their second language vocabulary. What if we change the text a bit to make it livelier. Say by using Direct Speech with its variety of forms and functions of the language. Arman! Dila! Wake up. Its school time, calls Pak Halim. Okay! Dad, Arman and Dila respond. They take their bath and wear their school uniform. Eat your breakfast. Im going to the estate, says Pak Halim. They eat their breakfast, plain fried rice. Dila does not see her 50 sen on the table. She knows her father has no

money right now.

The forms and functions of the syntax in the text are the language potential, the most relevant aspect that you should consider when planning a lesson. The forms Wake up and Eat your breakfast function as instruction while Im going to work functions as telling. What you see here is that you are making these young learners realise that they are unconsciously absorbing structures for instructing and telling which they already possess in their home language. They experience that their home language structures have their equals in English.