Teaching English for Young Learners

There are many statements about meaning of Young Learners, three of which will be stated here. According to Purwaningsih,“Young Learners are learners in Elementary School aging 9-10 years old who are learning English as foreign language” (8). Based on that statement, we can know that Young Learners are students of primary school. Another statement which is taken from www.goliath.ecnext.com also says, “Young Learners are convinced as students of English between age of 7 and 15” (http://goliat.ecnext.com /coms2/gi/0199-5785232, review of the Internet and html on September 19th 2008). The last statement about the meaning of Young Learners, according to Etty Maryati Hoesein, “Young Learners are the students of Elementary School who are at grade four up to grade six. Their ages range from ten to twelve years of age. They have learned English for about one up to four years” (14). From those three statements , we may conclude that Young Learners are students who are studying in Elementary or Senior High School aging 7-15 and they are studying English as second language for about one up to four years. In other words, we may say that Young Learners are English foreign language learners, aging 9- 17. According to some experts, we can determine several definitions about teaching, but we will just explain three of them. In his thesis, Teaching of English at SMU Nurul Jadid Probolinggo, Kasbolah writes, “Teaching is guiding and facilitating, enabling the learners to learn and setting the condition for learning” (13). Another definition, according to Callahan and Gark, ”Teaching is a matter of helping students to know, to understand, and to comprehend ideas, attitudes values, skills, and information which will be used in changing and in redefining their thought forward their daily surrounding situation” (9). The third definition, according to Antony, “Teaching techniques are particular tricks, strategies, or continuances used to accomplish the immediate objectives” (19). We can conclude that teaching is guiding, helping, facilitating the students to know, to understand, to comprehend ideas, attitudes values, skills, and information using tricks and strategies. Furthermore, teaching is supporting and helping students’ activity of learning by using the methods of teaching to know the ideas or information, which are important. Based on the definition of Young Learners and Teaching above, we are able to find the meaning of teaching English for Young Learners. Teaching English for Young Learners is guiding and facilitating Young Learners in aging 9-15 years old, for their activities in learning, knowing, understanding, and comprehending ideas, attitudes values , skills, and information of English using tricks and strategies which will be used in changing and redefining their thought forward their daily surrounding situation as a foreign languages learners.