YOUNG LEARNERS´ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL DEVELOPMENT AND MOTIVATION THROUGH THE USE OF A PUPPET
Abstract
A worldwide trend nowadays is to teach English at an early age. However, teaching this language to young learners is a real challenge. Teachers need special training and suitable methodologies to engage these active learners. In Chile, English language teaching starts as a compulsory school subject with 10-year-old students. This is not an easy task in the Chilean EFL classroom as few universities offer training programs or minors to teach English at the primary or preschool levels. The following study focuses on developing a group of young learners´ speaking skill through the use of a puppet created by the English teacher. The experience takes place in a public school in Chile. It is a qualitative descriptive study. The puppet called Simon plays an active role in all the English lessons interacting constantly with the children. As a result, , it can be concluded that the use of puppetry in the EFL classroom effectively helped young learners to become more confident when they face the learning of a new language, encouraged them to speak in English and facilitated the teacher’s interaction with students, creating a suitable emotional environment that promoted the learning of a foreign language.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v7i8.3212
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