5 essentials every child needs when you're teaching English

Jeanne Perrett
Two parents sat with their two children, writing in a workbook togeher

The educational choices available to children are evolving rapidly with apps, online courses, digital games, recordings and videos becoming easily accessible. However, amidst this technological advancement, human evolution has not suddenly accelerated, and the primary aim for teachers remains unchanged - helping children make sense of the world and leaving their mark on it.

Here are five essential ways we can achieve that for every child, regardless of their circumstances, whether it's teaching English or fostering everyday learning and education.

5 essentials every child needs when you're teaching English
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1. Attention

Paying attention to what we're doing is something that we have to re-learn. Very young childrenpay great attention to the smallest of things. Washing their hands takes forever as they want tofocus on the soap, doing up shoelaces can become a half-hour activity, or an interesting pebble on theroad can make a quick trip to the shops a very long one.

So, what happens is that we then startteaching children to hurry up. ‘Hurry up, come on, quickly, now - put on your coat NOW!’ are part ofevery parent’s repertoire. And we have to do it because we know what the children don’t - that the bus won’t wait for us, that school starts at a certain time and that people will be kept waiting if we don’thurry up.

Therefore paying attention has to be re-learnt and we need to lead the way. We have to pay attention tothe children, what they are saying and doing, and then we have to resist the temptation to do toomany things at once. And, most importantly, we have to give our children enough time to letthings sink in.

2. Skills

We have so many ways of describing skills now; soft, hard, thinking, critical, communication - the listgoes on. In some ways, these descriptors are useful as they make us more aware of the particularskills of a child, but there is still often a gap between knowing how a child is skilled and how that canbe useful to the child.

Let’s take a classic example; one of the main qualities people often think of asconnected to nursing is a skill for caring, showing compassion and being a good communicator.Yes, that is important, but the main skill needed to be a nurse is dealing competently, practicallyand non-judgmentally with bodily fluids. So, yes, we absolutely need to make sure that we areeducating our children to become skillful in various ways but we also need to think about how thoseskills are transferable.

3. Knowledge

One of the most significant changes of the past 40 years is how we can access information. Gone are thedays of one version of an encyclopedia or whatever your teacher knew; now we have online data,crowdsourced reports, scores of different formats - everything is a click and a swipe away.

So how canwe help with this? First, we have to get children interested enough in a topic to want to find thingsout for themselves. Then we must guide them through what is true and what might not be. Andthen our main job is showing them that they can add to the tree of knowledge. It’s constantly growing,and they can lengthen the branches, help fruit grow, and even dig up the roots and plant the treeelsewhere.

4. Imagination

Thinking creatively, thinking ‘out of the box’ and seeing new possibilities can and must benurtured in our children. We can use our imagination in traditionally creative ways such as writing, artwork, music and drama, but perhaps even more importantly we can use it in ‘unseen’ ways. Wecan unlearn banal responses and consider what we really think; in other words we can ‘think forourselves’. Again this skill is needed more than ever when surrounded by seeminglywise thoughts in social media memes. The nature of memes is that they look definite, as if they aretrue. They might be and they might not. We can decide when we use our critical and creativethinking skills.

We can use imagination to find solutions to problems and we can use it to make our own everyday realitiesmore exciting and life-enhancing. Whatever we do, if we have a positive image of ourselves doingit, the task becomes more meaningful and rewarding. And in a practical sense in the classroom, wecan bring language learning to life. Imagining and play acting the situations where the language we arelearning might be called for; in a restaurant, at an airport or meeting new friends. It can be a great method to teach English to kids, keeping them engaged and actively involved.

5. Support

Support comes in many forms. First concrete support, such as providing a desk and materials for children todo their homework. This is something that teachers need to be aware of; do the children have thatat home? It’s not a question of finance - not everyone can afford a separate room and the space for adesk - but it is a question of realizing that a dedicated, quiet space is needed. For example a clearedkitchen table at certain times of the day. It’s worth bearing this in mind if parents say theirchildren never focus on homework. Look at the practicalities before any attitude issues.

The most important form of support we can give is ‘being there’ for our children. Knowing thatsomeone wants you to do well, is there for you through your mistakes and successes, andempathizes with both. Someone who ‘has your back’ when you need help and is glad for you whenyou do well; that gives our children a powerful sense of security. And we can flourish when we feelsecure.

By implementing these above points, we can equip children with the tools they need to understand the world, pursue their passions and make a positive impact on their lives and others.

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  • A suitcase with flag stickers on sat on a map of the world

    How do English phrases travel across countries?

    By David Crystal

    All living languages change. It’s a fact of life that some people find uncomfortable, but that no one can prevent. The only languages that don’t change are dead ones.

    How does change happen? The chief way is through mutual influence, when languages – which means people – come into contact with each other. An immediate effect is that words and phrases begin to be exchanged.

    Origins of English

    The history of English shows this taking place from the very beginning. When the Germanic tribes first arrived in Britain, bringing with them the dialects that would become English, their vocabulary already contained words and phrases borrowed from Latin, a consequence of the interaction with the soldiers of the Roman Empire.

    Today we think of such words as 'butter', 'cup', 'kitchen', 'mile', and 'street' as true English words, but they are all Latin in origin ('butyrum', 'cuppa', 'coquina', 'mille', 'strata'), taken into Germanic while the tribes were still on the European mainland.

    The process continued over the centuries. An everyday word like 'take' reminds us of the Viking invasions, for this came from Old Norse 'tacan'. So did 'knife' (from 'knifr'). Even basic grammatical items were affected: 'they', 'them', and 'their' are all from Old Norse.

    When the French arrived, in the eleventh century, the borrowing became a flood, with thousands of French words expanding the vocabulary to an unprecedented size, in such domains as law, religion, politics, food, and the arts – 'duke', 'abbot', 'war', 'peace', 'pork' and 'beauty'. During the Renaissance, Latin added tens of thousands more.

    In all cases, the words traveled because cultural contact – in its broadest sense – made them do so.

    The history of contact

    This history of contact is one of the reasons that English has so many near-synonyms: we can 'ask' (from Old English), 'question' (from French), and 'interrogate' (from Latin). We can talk about a 'fire', 'flame', and 'conflagration'; 'kingly', 'royal', and 'regal'. But although French and Latin are the dominant voices, they are put in the shade by the accumulated impact of the many languages that English has since encountered as its speakers moved around the globe, especially in the days of the British Empire.

    Today, a search through the files of any major dictionary shows the presence of hundreds of languages, from 'aardvark' (Afrikaans) to 'zygote' (Greek).

    It’s been estimated that around 80 percent of present-day English vocabulary comes from languages other than the original Anglo-Saxon Germanic. English seems to always be a vacuum cleaner of a language, sucking in words from whichever culture it was in contact with. The process continues. In recent years, dictionary writers have been considering such new borrowings of words from other languages.

    But not everything in language change is due to borrowing. When we look at recent lists of updates in the dictionary world, we find hundreds of phrasal expressions, such as 'solar farm', 'travel card', 'skill set', 'cold caller', 'air punch', and 'set menu'.

    Blends of existing words form an increasingly large component of modern vocabulary, such as 'glamping' (glamorous + camping) and 'Pokemon' (pocket + monster), as do internet abbreviations, such as 'GTG' (got to go) and 'BRB' (be right back).

    And it’s here that we see the most noticeable phenomenon of the last few decades: the impact of English on other languages. The traveling is now going in both directions.

    Over a decade ago, Manfred Görlach published his Dictionary of European Anglicisms, showing English to be "the world’s biggest lexical exporter”. The book lists hundreds of words and phrases that have entered the languages of Europe. A small selection from letter 'A' shows 'ace' (from tennis), 'aerobics', 'aftershave', and 'aqualung', as well as phrases such as 'acid house' and 'air bag'.

    The factors are exactly the same as those that brought foreign words into English in the first place, such as business, culture, medicine, sport, the arts, popular music, science and technology. The difference is that these expressions come from all over the English-speaking world, with American English the primary supplier, thanks chiefly to its presence in the media.

    The impact of media

    It is the media that provides the main answer to the question “How?”. In the old days, face-to-face contact caused expressions to be shared, and it would take time for words to travel – a generation before a word would become widely used. Today, the use of English in film, television, and especially the internet allows 'word travel' to take place at a faster rate than ever before.

    A new word or phrase invented today can be around the globe by tomorrow, and if it appeals it will spread on social media and become part of daily use in no time at all. Even an everyday phrase can receive a new lease of life in this way.

    Many countries try to resist the borrowing process, thinking that an uncontrolled influx of English expressions will destroy their language.

    The evidence from the history of English shows that this does not happen. Because of its global spread, English has borrowed more words than any other language – and has this caused its destruction? On the contrary, in terms of numbers of users, English is the most successful language the world has ever seen.

    Borrowing does change the character of a language, and this too is something that causes concern. But again, I ask: is this inevitably a bad thing? Shakespeare would have been unable to write his characters in such an effective way without all those borrowings from French and Latin.

    Much of his linguistic playfulness and creativity relies on how everyday words are contrasted with their scholarly or aristocratic counterparts. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Don Armado gives Costard a coin as a tip, calling it a "remuneration".

    Costard has no idea what the word means, but when he looks at his coin he realizes he’s been given a tiny amount. “Oh, that’s the Latin word for three farthings”, he reflects. “I will never buy and sell out of this word”. It always gets a laugh from an audience.

    Today's challenges

    Keeping up-to-date with language change is probably the greatest challenge facing foreign language learners because there is so much of it.

    Textbooks and teachers face a daily risk of falling behind the times. But the risk can be reduced if we build an awareness of change into the way we present a language. And understanding the natural processes that underlie linguistic change is the essential first step.