Hello English teachers. I know that teaching children English as a foreign or additional language can be challenging. You may live in a country or context where English is not spoken outside of the classroom. How can your young students learn English if it is not used in their daily lives? Let's look at how children can effectively learn a foreign language. First, let me ask you a question. How important is teaching grammar to young learners of English? Is it very important? Somewhat important, not very important or not important at all. I'll give you five seconds to think about it. What do you think? Of course grammar is important. Grammatical structures are the building blocks of language but the approach to teaching grammar should match the way students learn. Your approach to teaching grammar should be learning center which Lynn Cameron describes as meaningful and interesting. Require active participation from learners and will work with how children learn and what they are capable of learning. Children do not learn language as effectively through grammatical explanations. Young learners gain an understanding of the grammar through repetition and recycling language in different contexts. You need to provide a meaningful context to teach language. Children will be able to see how grammar works within a story, song or cartoon. In short, your approach to teaching grammar should be learning centered and meaning focused and it should avoid grammatical explanations. For example, children won't learn language when you explain what the imperative mode is. They learn what it is when you give commands. You say sit down and students sit down. You say write your name and they write their name on the paper. Through the context and through meaningful repetition they learn the grammar. You can help them by creating an English speaking environment in your classroom. You have to present English in authentic and meaningful ways. Real communication puts language in action and promotes interaction. If you present language through communication and a meaningful context, your students will need some scaffolding. You should use different techniques to make the language comprehensible. Children need concrete ways to understand language. You can use visuals like pictures and flashcards to help make new words comprehensible. Gestures and body movement and realia can help teach language effectively to our young kinesthetic learners and keep them engaged in class. You can also help young learners organize ideas by using graphic organizers like venn diagrams or tables. These techniques engage young learners while helping them understand new language effectively. Your young learners may not have many chances to hear English or use English in their daily lives. They begin learning the language by listening to you. It is important to scaffold their language learning through your own language. You may need to make some adjustments. Be sure you pronounce words clearly and speak slowly. But be careful and don't speak unnaturally. Keep a natural flow to your speaking. If students do not understand what you are saying, then you can repeat and even rephrase. Try to use shorter and simpler sentences and phrases. Don't forget to be a model for your young learners. Before they speak, show them what you want them to say. And sometimes you may need to translate difficult words into students' native language. However, you want to provide plenty of opportunities for your young learners to hear and practice English so translating should happen only when necessary. You can use other techniques like visuals, gestures or a realia instead. Now let's review what we learned. What kind of approach should we take to teach young learners English as a foreign language? Which lesson would be more effective? The storytelling lesson will be more effective with young learners because it takes a learning center meaning focused approach to grammar. You can make it more effective by using visuals, gestures and adjusting your speaking to make the language in the story comprehensible. This will help you build an English speaking environment in your classroom. Try it and you'll see.