TEACHING ENGLISH TO PRE-SCHOOLERS USING ‘LEARNING BY PLAYING’ APPROACH: EXPERIMENT, RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Abstract

While it was becoming more and more imperative to develop applicable theories and gather experience in improving learners’ English proficiency at all levels of education, we piloted the ‘learning by playing’ approach in teaching English to pre-schoolers at a kindergarten. Evaluation results over the course of a school year show that this approach helps pre-schoolers improve and maintain their learning motivation, keep their words-memorizing-ability at a sustainable level and improve their communication ability. Besides, the results point out that pre-schoolers are able to participate effectively in guided self-study. These positive initial results promote the belief in a teaching approach that suits children’s psycho-biological characteristics, as well as encourage early childhood educational institutions to apply suggested teaching activities, create and experiment new activities following suggested principles that are suitable to their given conditions.