At the moment I’m spending more of my time focusing on teaching Starters and the ‘younger’ of young learners. I’ve really been enjoying this book ‘Teaching Young Learners’ by Joan Kang Shin and JoAnn Crandall. In the young learner field, I’ve found a lot of the books are either superficial, or quite dense and academic in tone. However, this book is very practical and accessible. While areas such as reading and writing can be covered in stand-alone books, I think the authors do a great job of treating many of these topic areas. They have managed to fill those chapters with really practical tools and techniques. Having researched some of these areas in depth, I appreciate that they present a balanced view of the topics I’m familiar with, and often refer the reader to some of their most useful source materials.
The one area I didn’t agree much with was classroom management. However, in my experience, EFL/ESL authors, teachers and trainers almost universally don’t have a very good understanding of the classroom management methods they recommend. This is because their knowledge is drawn from that which other teachers in the industry use, and not from best practices in a broader educational context.
Overall, I’m finding Teaching Young Learners English one of the better books I’ve read on the subject, and I’m discovering a lot of ideas and tools I can apply into my classes. (You can download the table of contents here or read an article of tips for Teaching English to Young Learners by Joan Kang Shin.)
