Advanced Didactics of the English Language Study Notes

Motivation in the EFL Pre-school Classroom

Motivation is considered an essential concept in teaching, not only for students but also for teachers. It is established that children will not learn from someone who does not like teaching; therefore, teaching must be chosen based on a real vocation. In the context of pre-school education, motivation is the engine that drives the learning process, regardless of the student's age. At this stage, the learner’s enthusiasm and perseverance are essential to determine success or failure in learning a foreign language (FL). It is observed that motivated pre-school students can achieve a high command of English despite other factors, such as their aptitude to learn languages. Consequently, attitude toward the language is often more significant than innate aptitude.

Teachers are responsible for creating an environment where children feel comfortable and are not afraid to use the FL. During the pre-school stage, both motivation and interaction are essential. All children generally have similar aptitudes toward language acquisition. If English is taught correctly during this period, students will enter primary education with a solid command, particularly in listening skills. In the 1980s, Winitz, Krashen, Terrel, and Asher developed the principles of the comprehension approach, which posits that an FL is learned like a first language (L1). Key aspects include allowing for a period of silence and observation, providing a large amount of comprehensible input, ensuring no one is forced to speak until they are ready, and letting language emerge and improve gradually. To follow this approach, teachers must offer correct language models, as children copy pronunciation and grammatical constructions. For example, if a teacher lacks sufficient level and says $\text{/ˈtelebɪʃɒn/}$ instead of \text{/ˈtelɪ ˌvɪʒn̩/}, those are the phonemes the pupils will acquire.

Motivation is an abstract concept referring to the reasons why people act. It contains various motives that influence behavior and the face of the learning process. For example, a student might be motivated by material needs like a pay rise or physical needs like hunger, or by beliefs and values. However, pre-schoolers do not pursue these types of goals; they learn English because it is part of their educational plan. Therefore, the teacher must plan enjoyable activities within a comfortable atmosphere. Dörnyei ($1994$) identified teacher-specific motivational components: the affiliative drive (the need to please a liked teacher), the teacher’s authority type (autonomy-supporting vs. controlling), and the socialization of motivation (modelling, task presentation, and feedback). Feedback should be primarily informational, commenting on competence, rather than controlling, which judges performance against external standards.

According to Dörnyei ($2001$), motivation has two basic dimensions: Direction (the choice of action) and Intensity or magnitude (the effort and persistence). Motivation refers to why someone decides to carry out an action, their degree of implication, and the duration of their interest. Age is a primary factor influencing these motives. If the learning environment is suitable, pre-schoolers can acquire an FL naturally. However, poor resources or unqualified teachers can undermine this. The classroom is a complex environment involving social growth, friendship, and personal circumstances. No single theory or activity can fully explain this complexity; multiple factors must always be considered.

Internal and External Factors of Motivation

Foreign languages are not just another curriculum topic but a social tool. Learning a language involves learning vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, as well as how people interact and behave in another culture. This complexity is better understood by examining internal and external factors of motivation. Williams and Burden ($1997$) described factors affecting L$2$/FL motivation. Internal factors include intrinsic interest of activity (arousal of curiosity, optimal challenge), perceived value of the activity (personal relevance, utility, interest), and agency (locus of causal control, self-worth). External factors involve significant others (parents, teachers, peers), the learning environment (comfort, resources, atmosphere), and the broader context (local and national community, cultural images). Pre-schoolers are often motivated by the desire to show parents and teachers their improvement, but each student has individual needs.

Deci and Ryan ($1985$) stated that children are find themselves intrinsically motivated to learn, solve problems, and undertake challenges. If a child is unwilling to learn, it is because something has destroyed this natural tendency. Students who are intrinsically motivated engage more in activities, learn better, and enjoy the process more than those who are only extrinsically motivated. Intrinsic motivation involves behaviors performed for pleasure, satisfaction, or curiosity. Extrinsic motivation involves acting as a means to an end, such as receiving rewards like good grades or avoiding punishment. While rewards might seem like a solution for unattractive tasks, the results are often negative. Furthermore, rewarding an already existing intrinsic interest can lead to a loss of that interest once the reward is discontinued. Intrinsically motivated children view mistakes as a natural part of the learning process rather than punishment.

Self-determination theory, defined by Deci and Ryan, is a quality of human functioning involving the experience of choice and an internal perceived locus of causality. It is integral to intrinsic behavior and some extrinsic behaviors. Blumenfeld ($1992$) identified key motivational elements for creating tasks: variety, challenge, and meaningfulness. Meaningfulness is the key dimension of any task. In a classroom, while tasks are academic, they must be meaningful. Constructivism highlights authentic tasks which require students to use tools, practice self-regulation, and apply knowledge across situations. In this context, the teacher acts as a facilitator, using scaffolding, coaching, and modelling to help learners become independent.

Motivational Teaching Practice and Meaningful Learning

Promoting motivation as a foreign language teacher can be more demanding than for a general tutor. While a tutor spends the whole day with a group, an English teacher often rotates through multiple groups, requiring sustained enthusiasm while repeating content. Dörnyei ($2001$) outlined four steps for motivational practice: creating basic conditions, generating initial motivation, maintaining and protecting motivation, and encouraging positive self-evaluation. To create basic conditions, teachers should model enthusiasm and show high expectations for student achievement. A good relationship is essential; teachers are facilitators, not bosses. Listening to students, solving problems through personal contact, and maintaining good communication with parents (to share progress, not just problems) are key strategies. The classroom should be a pleasant, supportive, and anxiety-free zone where mistakes are accepted as part of learning.

Generating initial motivation involves promoting values. Intrinsic values relate to making the course fun (using music, outdoor activities, or technology). Integrative values refer to an interest in the target language's social group; this is fostered by including cultural components, authentic materials (food, films, TV characters), and contact with speakers. Instrumental values involve the practical benefits of the language. In pre-school, this is reinforced by encouraging communication, even at a basic level. To avoid frustration, teachers must increase the expectancy of success by providing sufficient preparation and guidance. Finding out student interests through discussions or observing their play helps make materials relevant. Realistic learner beliefs should also be fostered; students should understand that language learning takes time.

Maintaining motivation requires variety in tasks and protecting student self-esteem. Teachers should emphasize student strengths and provide constructive feedback. For example, instead of criticizing a pronunciation error, a teacher should provide a correct model naturally. To encourage positive self-evaluation, teachers should promote motivational attributions, encouraging students to explain failures by a lack of effort or strategy rather than a lack of ability. Celebrating student victories and making progress tangible (through visual records) increases satisfaction.

Meaningful learning is vital for linguistic competence. While students must understand phonological and syntactic norms, success is defined as using the target language for meaningful communication. In meaningful learning, new information is connected to previous knowledge. Ausubel ($2000$) contrasts this with rote learning (memorization), which has limited utility. Meaning reception learning requires potentially meaningful material and a meaningful learning set (relevance). For example, a teacher should not teach about the underground to children who have only seen buses. Materials must be relevant, and the teacher should avoid introducing too many new concepts at once so students can assimilate them easily.

Oral Skills: The Process of Decoding

Understanding spoken language is the first step in acquisition. Oral skills are central because the primary objective of language is communication. In the human brain, language is handled by two specific areas in the left hemisphere: Broca’s area (language production) and Wernicke’s area (language comprehension). Damage to these areas result in various forms of aphasia. Children are in a critical period for acquisition ($Lenneberg, 1967$). By age $3$ or $4$, children in contact with an FL community can learn the language rapidly without an accent. However, in many school settings, exposure is limited. In Spain, English in pre-school was implemented in $2006$ with the Ley Orgánica de Educación (LOE). Pre-school methodology differs from adult teaching as it focuses solely on spoken language and content-rich tasks rather than grammar reflection.

Cameron ($2006$) noted that children are enthusiastic, will engage even if they don't fully understand, and are not afraid to use the language, but they lose interest quickly if the activity is boring. Language is acquired through use and hearing correct models. A primary technique for clarifying vocabulary is the negotiation of meaning, where speakers use paraphrasing, synonyms, or extralinguistic cues to ensure they are understood. Successful listening involves organizing and analyzing information quickly. The decoding process involves phonemes grouped into syllables, which form words, resulting in a full utterance. A complication in this process is connected speech, where phonemes are linked. This can lead to rebracketing, such as the historical change of "a nadder" to "an adder." Misunderstandings occur as the brain tries to find sense in unknown sounds, often transforming them into familiar words.

According to Field ($2009$), listening skills consist of decoding (translating signals into sounds and meaning) and meaning building (expanding meaning with prior knowledge). The listener requires three types of information: Input (received sounds), Linguistic knowledge (internal knowledge of grammar and syntax), and Context (general knowledge and previous conversation). There are two directions of processing: bottom-up (small units building into large ones) and top-down (using context or co-text to identify unclear words). Stanovich ($1980$) proposed the interactive compensatory hypothesis, stating that when input confidence is low, top-down information plays a larger role. For instance, in the sentence "Lucas brought me a present… I buried it in the garden," the listener needs the top-down knowledge that Lucas is a cat to understand why burying a "present" is natural behavior. Syntactic ambiguity, illustrated by the phrase "Time flies like an arrow," can also be overcome through this hypothesis.

Implementing Listening and Speaking Lessons

Listening activities provide context for sound combinations and grammar. In the older three-stage format (pre-listening, while-listening, post-listening), too much emphasis was placed on metalinguistics and memory. Field ($2009$) suggests a current format to better reflect communicative needs. The pre-listening stage should involve pre-teaching only critical vocabulary—words without which the recording cannot be understood—rather than every unknown word. It also involves establishing context and creating motivation, for instance, by asking students to predict contents based on a title. During the listening stage, pre-set questions ensure students know what to listen for, and pair-work is used to check answers to reduce insecurity. Post-listening focuses on functional language (refusing, apologizing) and inferring vocabulary from context. While real life involves strategies to bridge gaps, early classroom materials often simplify speech too much.

Field ($2009$) describes different types of listening: passive listening (identifying points of information) and interactive listening (where the roles of speaker and listener shift). Listener responses should suit the input: Following instructions (listen and do), Brief responses (listen and identify), Sustained speech (summing up), or Interaction (asking questions). Specific activities for beginners include "Listen and identify" (identifying a pictured animal from a description), "Bingo" (matching spoken words to pictures), "Listen and take away" (removing items based on characteristics), and "Find the odd one out." Although speaking often causes the most anxiety, interactive pre-schoolers are motivated when environments are supportive. Integrated activities include "Look and say," "Listen and choose," "Tennis game" (naming items in a semantic field), and guessing games.

Written Skills and Materials

English is not a phonetic language, making its literacy training different from other official languages in Spain. Pre-schoolers should not begin formal literacy until they are interested, usually in Primary school, but written words can be introduced earlier with an emphasis on listening and speaking. Reading is an active activity where students decode written symbols and connect them with prior knowledge. Even if pre-schoolers only use isolated words or simple sentences like "I live in a house," these must be in a meaningful context. Stanovich ($1986$) identified "word calling," where words are decoded without constructing meaning, which is frustrating for learners. Successful reading requires phonological awareness and combining bottom-up and top-down information.

Print awareness involves understanding that printed words are unique symbols different from drawings or numbers. It is acquired progressively as adults read to children or when children see words on toys or shops. Classrooms should have environmental print—words related to relevant topics like "Christmas" or "meals." Fitzgerald ($1994$) recommends accessible menus, magazines, and grocery lists. Emergent literacy involves print and phonological awareness. A teacher can use flashcards that incorporate drawings into words, such as representing the word "cat" using cat shapes, so children associate the form with meaning and pronunciation without stopping the conversation. Authentic materials like everyday food containers (e.g., a can of baked beans) highlight the importance of paratexts like brand capitalization and pictures.

Johns and Davies ($1983$) categorized text use into three forms: TALO (text as a linguistic object, focusing on grammar and spelling), TAVI (text as a vehicle for information, for culture or comprehension), and TASP (text as a stimulus for production, using the text as a topic for speaking or writing). Combining skills involves children observing the teacher write words as they are spoken or tracking print from left to right during storytelling. Stories help children see how books are handled and how ideas are expressed. Critical literacy, as described by Janks ($2013$), enables students to read the word and the world in relation to power and identity. It teaches that texts are not neutral but reflect the author’s subjectivity. Intercultural reading helps children realize that their reality is just one of many, promoting respect for diversity from an early age.

The Role of Culture: Englishes and Interculturalism

Learning English involves learning another way of categorizing the universe. English is a global property, not belonging to any single nation. There are approximately $2$ billion speakers worldwide, including native, second language, and foreign language speakers. English expansion is due to historic convenience rather than grammatical simplicity. It gained status as the language of the leading colonial power ($17^{th}$ and $18^{th}$ centuries), the industrial revolution ($18^{th}$ and $19^{th}$ centuries), and the economic and electronic revolutions of the $20^{th}$ and $21^{st}$ centuries led by the USA. History shows that Old English (OE) was a declined language influenced by Germanic tribes in the $5^{th}$ century. After the $1066$ Norman invasion, English absorbed French and Latin influences. Given the variety of accents (Irish, Australian, etc.), teachers should provide any correct model with clear pronunciation.

Language death is a concern as dominant languages like English can cause smaller cultures to fade. The Council of Europe ($2014$) favors linguistic diversity over homogenization. Teachers must promote English as a tool for Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), which involves linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and intercultural competence. Bennet ($1993$) proposed the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), comprising ethnocentric stages (Denial, Defence, Minimization) and ethnorelative stages (Acceptance, Adaptation, Integration). Pre-schoolers are often free of the prejudices found in adults. Promoting ICC can involve online exchanges, the OSEE tool (Observe, State, Explore, Evaluate), documenting transformations collectively, and exploring cultural artifacts like global food or musical instruments.

Folklore and History of the British Isles

The British Isles include all islands in the archipelago, whereas the "British Islands" specifically refer to the UK, the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, and the Isle of Man. The UK is a monarchy of four countries: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. History in this region is a mix of Celts (who arrived in the $6^{th}$ century BC with Goidelic and Brythonic languages), Romans (invaded in $43$ BC, built Hadrian's Wall in $122$ AD), Anglo-Saxons ($5^{th}$ century, brought the English language), Vikings ($8^{th}$ century), and Normans ($1066$). Significant archaeological sites include Maiden Castle and the Sutton Hoo ship burial. Christianization involved figures like Saint Patrick, Saint Ninian, and Saint Augustine.

Traditions in the British Isles follow a seasonal timeline. Harvest involved superstitions like cutting the "last sheaf," often called "the Neck," which was transformed into a corn dolly as a fertility symbol. Samhain (Halloween) originated as a night when the worlds of the living and dead connected; traditional games included apple bobbing and carving turnips (now pumpkins). Christmas traditions include Father Christmas, Christmas crackers, and Boxing Day (Wren Day), where "hunting the wren" was a common custom. New Year's Day features the "first-footer" tradition. Other key celebrations include Imbolc (Saint Brigit’s Day), Mothering Sunday (fourth Sunday of Lent, featuring Welsh lovespoons), and Easter (with pace-egging and skipping). Beltane features May Queens and Maypole dancing. The Scottish Highland Games include events like the Caber toss and the Tug o’war.

Folklore and History of the USA

The USA was founded on July $4$, $1776$, following the independence of thirteen British colonies. Native Americans, believed to have arrived from Siberia and Mongolia during the last ice age, suffered greatly from European contact due to warfare and infectious diseases. The Indian Removal Act of $1830$ relocated as many as $100,000$ people. Native American cultures used "winter counts" (stories drawn in spiral patterns on hides) and dreamcatchers (protective willow nets). The first permanent English settlement was Jamestown in $1607$, followed by the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower in $1620$. Large-scale immigration in the $19^{th}$ and $20^{th}$ centuries from Ireland, Italy, and Germany shaped the nation’s linguistic landscape.

Conflict with the British crown over taxes, such as the Sugar Act ($1764$), Stamp Act ($1765$), and Townshend Acts ($1767$), led to the Boston Tea Party in $1773$. The US Civil War occurred in $1861$. Major American traditions include Thanksgiving (first celebrated in $1621$), which involves family meals, parades, and the presidential turkey pardon. Read Across America celebrates the birth of Dr. Seuss on March $2^{nd}$. Interesting facts include that the US has no official language, the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France that took four months to travel by sea, and the stars on the flag represent the current $50$ states while the bars represent the original colonies.

The Commonwealth of Nations

The Commonwealth of Nations ($1926$) is a voluntary association of $53$ free and equal states, mostly former British colonies. It provides support for development, human rights, and democracy. Members participate in the Commonwealth Games every four years. Geographically, this includes Canada (settled by those fleeing the American Independence), the Caribbean (shaped by the slave trade and the development of pidgin and creole languages), Australia (first used as a penal colony at Sydney), New Zealand (established by the Treaty of Waitangi in $1840$), South Africa (influenced by the Napoleonic Wars and gold mining), and South Asia (shaped by the British East India Company).

Popular Commonwealth traditions include Diwali (the Indian Festival of Lights), which involves Rangoli patterns and clay lamps. The Cayman Islands host Pirates Week in November. Junkanoo in the Bahamas is a street festival on Boxing Day and New Year where participants wear masks and use cowbells and drums. New Zealand's Haka and the Chinese New Year (celebrated in major Chinatowns like London) are also significant. Chinese New Year follows the lunar calendar and involves deep cleaning to drive out bad luck, red lanterns, and giving lucky money in red envelopes to children. The legend of the twelve zodiac animals involves a race or a summons by Buddha.

Literature and Music as Teaching Resources

Storytelling is a tool for increasing vocabulary through both direct reference and incidental encounters. According to Ellis and Brewster ($2014$), stories are motivating, exercise imagination, develop group cohesion, and promote intercultural understanding. Telling a story requires the teacher to interpret the text, making eye contact and using voice modulation. Counting and vocabulary books are useful for initial input, while legends and classical tales provide cultural background. Modern classics include "The Gruffalo" ( Donaldson and Scheffler), "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" (Carle), which teaches food and days of the week, and "The Cat in the Hat" (Dr. Seuss), known for its repetitive structures and movement vocabulary. Maya Angelou’s books like "Kofi and his Magic" promote global awareness.

Music and rhymes provide a non-threatening environment for language acquisition. The phonological loop ($Baddeley and Hitch, 1974$) consists of the phonological store and the articulatory control process, which encode and rehearse speech sounds. Songs like "Brother John," "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," and "If you’re happy" link movement with language. English is a stress-timed language, meaning syllables have different durations, unlike syllable-timed languages. Poetry in English is written in feet, which are units of metre. Basic feet include the Iamb (unstressed-stressed), Trochee (stressed-unstressed), Spondee (stressed-stressed), Pyrrhic (unstressed-unstressed), Anapest (unstressed-unstressed-stressed), and Dactyl (stressed-unstressed-unstressed). Monosyllabic content words like nouns and verbs are typically stressed, while function words like articles and prepositions are unstressed.