Course aims

The aims of the Story time English course are:

• To enrich your child’s understanding of spoken English and provide some opportunities for speaking
• To build your child’s motivation for learning English
• To help your child adapt to a classroom led by an English speaking teacher and develop confidence and skills to participate effectively in this environment. This will help your child adjust more easily to studying English in courses at elementary school level, such as our Starting Out courses (1A and 1B).

Stories and songs

Each lesson is based around a story or song. These provide a context which is accessible, engaging and meaningful for the children. There are colourful characters they can relate to and a sequence of events they can understand and enjoy. We use both sound, visuals and movement to present stories and songs to children so that we maximise their understanding and cater to the different ways individual children learn.

Stories: We use real books for stories. These are large books originally intended to be used with native English-speaking children. We carefully select these books to be accessible and appropriate for children on the Story time English course.  The advantage of using real books is that they have a lot of rich language so that as the teacher tells the story, the children are exposed to lots of descriptive language beyond basic vocabulary. Children might hear language used in a dialogue, for making requests, for asking questions, for giving a challenge and so on, even though the basic core vocabulary in the story might be animals or colours.

Songs: We use songs that have an accessible topic and language for children on the Story time English course. Many of these songs are taken from our British Council Learn English Kids web site (http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids.htm). These have an animated sequence of pictures and there is usually a storyline behind each song with engaging characters and a sequence of events. The music and rhythm of songs can be very motivating for young children and help with memory and recall of language.

Teacher talk

A core part of our approach is the way the teacher talks with the children, particularly when telling the story or talking about the song in the first part of the lesson. The teacher helps to build children’s understanding of the story / song and excite their enthusiasm by pointing out pictures referred to, using mime and changing the tone of their voice for different characters and special effects. The teacher will often comment on the story in some way, for example, asking the children questions, perhaps to point at something on the page (“Where’s the fox? Can you show me?”), predict with the children what happens next (“What’s he going to do? Oh no, let’s see…”), give an opinion (“Oh, he’s a bad fox!”), or comment on something on the page with descriptive language (“What beautiful bird! Look at its lovely blue feathers”). In this way, the teacher gives lots of rich language input for the children to listen to that builds on and goes beyond core vocabulary in the story.

Listening and opportunities for speaking

Listening: The primary focus on the course is for children to get lots of opportunities to listen to spoken English from the teacher and from recordings in a way that is meaningful to them. Partly this is achieved through the way the teacher talks with the children as described under “Teacher talk” above. We also develop children’s understanding of the language from each story / song through follow-up activities. These can involve some drama and mime, for example, children act out different actions animals do in the story when the teacher says the appropriate sentence. Activities can also involve craftwork, so, for example, children create a simple puppet which they hold up later when the teacher retells part of the story. In all of these activities, the children are getting further opportunities to consolidate their understanding of the story and key language that is used.

Opportunities for speaking: Children are given opportunities for speaking when they are ready to contribute. This can happen in the initial story / song stage. When the teacher asks questions, children will often volunteer answers. Our teachers work flexibly when such opportunities arise and respond with follow up commentary and questions. These are ideal learning opportunities as children will only speak voluntarily if they are genuinely excited and interested and so they tend to understand such interactions with the teacher more and are more likely to absorb and remember a variety of different expressions beyond core vocabulary. With this in mind, we do not force children to repeat long sentences they do not understand in drills. Our teachers may encourage children to say core vocabulary from the story / song in a follow up activity to develop understanding further, improve pronunciation and aid memory. All such follow up activities are carefully designed and staged to ensure all children can participate and achieve some success.

A foundation for later literacy learning: Reading and writing are developed from the beginning of our primary English course, Starting Out 1A, and are not explicitly developed on the Story time English course. The primary focus of Story time English is to develop children’s understanding of spoken English with opportunities for speaking. This is a critical stage for younger children and there is evidence that good development of spoken English skills provides a stronger foundation for successful literacy development in a foreign language later.

Supporting children’s learning needs at this level

Building confidence and motivation: It can be a big step for young children when first joining a new class, and many can be very shy initially. Our teachers create a warm, pleasant learning environment, and, when necessary, work with parents in the initial stages of the course to help children integrate more comfortably into the classroom. Each Story time English class also has a Korean classroom assistant who helps with communication and making children feel more at ease. We continue to build children’s confidence and motivation by ensuring the stories, songs and activities we use are meaningful and interesting to them and design tasks carefully so that all children are able to feel a sense of achievement every lesson. In this way, we build their positive attitude to learning English which will help them in their future language learning.

Spoken English before literacy: A lot of research into children’s language learning highlights the need for children to develop strong listening and speaking skills first before developing literacy both in their own language and when learning a foreign language.  In order for children to recognise the sounds that letters make, they first need to recognise those sounds through listening. Understanding lots of words from the language through listening also helps children later when they start to read as they are more able to draw connections between what they already know and new written words they are introduced to. For this reason, the Story time English course focuses on developing children’s understanding of spoken English.

Listening before speaking: Research also shows that children generally learn a language by listening first and later starting to speak playfully with words and longer chunks of language. That is why our Story time English course emphasises listening, providing children some opportunities to speak in English when they are ready.  

The need for recycling topics and language: Another characteristic of children learning English, especially true of younger children, is that while they can learn language quickly, they can also forget language easily. For this reason, we recycle topics and language within and across lessons. Common themes such as animals and colours are repeated in different ways to consolidate and build children’s vocabulary. We also repeat story books and songs between terms with different activities. Not only does this help to consolidate children’s understanding and memory of language but also provides stronger opportunities for spoken production with a story that many children should still recognise and want to say something about.

Classroom skills: When studying an English course, not only do children need to develop English language skills but also skills for interacting in the classroom and managing their own learning. This is a big step for young children and is even more challenging in a foreign language. Our teachers introduce classroom routines for starting and finishing each lesson, for moving to different parts of the room, for getting the children’s attention and so on. Teachers use English classroom language for directing children’s behaviour during these routines, for praising and for giving instructions. These are all crucial components of an effective children’s classroom. For a class to work, children need to understand what is expected of them and the teacher’s instructions so this kind of interaction on the Story time English course is excellent preparation for classroom-based language learning later.

The teacher also encourages children to work together and individually, helping to develop initial social skills and concentration which will help children in group-based and individual tasks at later levels.

We use a lot of craftwork and drawing in follow up activities to stories and songs. This gets children used to collecting, using and tidying away classroom equipment. Drawing, colouring and cutting also develop fine motor skills which will help children later to manipulate a pencil when learning to write.  

Assessment, progress and communication

As children attending the Story time English course are very young and are just beginning to get used to a classroom-based learning environment, we do not use formal assessments. Instead, our teachers monitor children’s interaction with the stories, songs and activities and this takes place over the lessons of each term to ensure gathering of quality data on your child’s progress. Our teacher provides you with a written report recording this progress at the end of the term. We also provide you with a welcome letter at the start of each term that lists the stories, songs, topics and language covered each lesson that term. The order and content of material may change slightly depending on the teacher’s decision to meet emerging needs of children in the class.

Preparation for later levels

In summary, the aims of the Story time English course are for your child to develop their understanding of spoken English through listening and some opportunities for speaking, to develop classroom skills and to develop their confidence and motivation to learn English. All these areas provide an excellent foundation for further English learning in a classroom environment and a stronger basis for developing reading and writing at further levels such as on our Starting Out 1A and 1B courses.