ENGLISH FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

“SENSITISATION ACTIVITIES”

By:

1. DESI RIZMA YANTI (I2J018007)

2. ERNA YUNITA NOPITASARI ORA (I2J018009)

MASTER PROGRAM OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

LANGUAGE AND ART DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF MATARAM
2019
 Sensitisation Activities
Sensitisation to language can work on two levels:
If you are lucky enough to have students in your class whose L1 is different from their
classmate’, or who are perhaps bilingual, take advantage of this.
 If you have several other language speakers in your class, divide the class into groups with
one’ other language speaker’ in each group.
 Set the groups the task of learning something simple in the other language, e.g. My name is
David, I’m ten years old. The other language speaker(s) as the teacher. This is very useful for
integrating students from other ethnic groups.
 When each group has learned its ‘new language’, children can practice the sentences in class.
If you don’t have other language in your class, work as a whole group and try to think of words
that you use in your own language which are from other languages. Technology is a goof field
for this activity.
 Ask the students to name all the words from other languages that they can think of and to say
where these languages are spoken.
 Ask them if they know how to say anything in any of these languages.
A successful sensitisation exercise is to prove to the students that they actually already know
quite a lot of English. There are several methods that can help English teacher in sensitisation
activities. The first method is working with English letters, teaching the English alphabet is
surprisingly difficult because the names of the letters do not correspond to the sounds of the
letter speech. However, it is generally one of the first exercises in all coursebooks because it is
useful for spelling and listening exercises. Here are some activities to help your students to work
with the letter in English.
ACTIVITY 5: THE ALPHABET PYRAMID
This pyramid shows the letter of the alphabet in ‘sound’ groups:
/i:/ BCDEGPTV
/e:/ FLMNSXZ
/eɪ/ AHJK
/u:/ QUW
/aɪ/ IY
/əʊ/ O
 /ɑ:/ R

 Draw the pyramid on the blackboard

 Practice the sounds with the class several times
 The students copy the alphabet pyramid onto their cards
 Clean the blackboard. Write a letter on the board and point to a student and ask them to say
the letter.
 At first students can use their pyramid as a reference. Gradually ask them to identify the
sound without referring to the pyramid.
ACTIVITY 6: SECRET CODES
 Write the alphabet on the board with numbers underneath each letter
AB C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 12 1 14 1 16 1 18 19 2 21 2 23 2 25 26
1 3 5 7 0 2 4

 Tell the students to write their names on card in the number code with a slash (/) between
each number. Example: 19/21/19/1/14 (Susan).
 Collect all the cards and give one to each student at random.
 The students who are standing up to spell out the name on the card.
ACTIVITY 7: LETTER CLASSIFYING
For this activity make sure that your students are familiar with the task of putting words in
alphabetical order in their own language.
 Write a series of words on the board from the most recent vocabulary set the students have
been studying, make sure that no word begin with the same letter.
 Ask the students to write or call the words out in alphabetical order.
ACTIVITY 8: FAMOUS TELEPHONE NUMBERS
 Make up a list of about yen famous hero figures for your students (pop stars, historical
figures, television characters etc) and their ‘telephone numbers’.
 Tell the students to listen to the list of the famous people and then choose five people they
would like to telephone.
 Read the list of famous people again, but this time read their telephone number as well, e.g.
President of Jokowi’s phone number is 081 907 866 610.
 The students listen and write down the numbers of the people they have chosen.
 Read the list again so that they can check.
 You can write the full list on the board for students to check their phone numbers.
The second method that maybe can help teachers in sensitisation activities is working with
English sounds. Teaching sounds is primary level is important for future pronunciation,
especially once the students begin to read English. Focus on the vowel sounds first, as these are
the most difficult.
ACTIVITY 9: SOUND MATCHING
 Make enough copies of the material to go round the class. Cut off the last four words, which
are wild cards and do not have the same sounds as the test. Keep these for more complicated
versions of the activity. Give each student a copy and tell them to cut along the dotted lines
until they have all the words on separate pieces of paper.
 Check that they know the sounds /u:/ and /ɒ/; practice them with one or two familiar words
first.
 Hold up one of the cards and say the word, stressing the vowel sound. The students find this
word and place it face up on the table.
 Now tell students to find all the other words on their cards that have the same sound. They put
them all in one pile.
 Students can now play small groups or pairs. Walk round checking the sounds.
ACTIVITY 10: RHYMING WORDS
 Write about ten words on the board at random, making sure that you have five rhyming pairs,
e.g. blue/shoe.
 Check that the students can reproduce each of the words with the correct pronunciation.
 Ask students to put the words into five rhyming pairs.