Teaching English to young learners should be fun and suited to their nature as children, not treat them as little adults. Research shows children have their own culture and ways of learning that differ from adults. Specifically, children learn best through physical activities and using mental images at first, before progressing to more symbolic learning like language. Teachers should appreciate children in their own right and design lessons accordingly.

1. Young learners should have fun with English
Teaching English to young learners has become a trend nowadays. In every school, English is
taught as one of the main subjects. In teaching young learners is not like teaching adults,
children have their own way of learning. Since children like to play and have fun, the
learning and teaching process should be suited with the nature of the children themselves.
One of the forms of fun activities for children is through music, and songs are the common
form of music that children know.
Who are the children? Review of both theoretical treatise and research-based reports which
are underpinned by socio-cultural theories which strive to understand children from
children’s own perspectives will lead us to a clear conclusion that children are children not
little adults. As repeatedly shown in peer culture studies, children have their own culture
ways of doing things which are different from that of adults. Given this thinking, children
should be treated and appreciated in their own right.
The works of Bruner (1996) and later works of Piaget (1975) have provided very useful
insights into how children learn. More specifiacally, Bruner (1996) proposes a hierarchy of
children’s learning modes: enactive (which means relying on physical activities), iconic
(which represents residual mental images resulting from the contacts with material entities),
and symbolic (which comes later by way of symbolic means such as language).