The Use of English Picture Books for Teaching English to Young Children

• Main Authors: Hui-Chen Hsu, 許惠貞
• Other Authors: Yi-Chuan Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/tu78as

碩士 === 朝陽科技大學 === 幼兒保育系碩士班 === 92 === This study mainly aims to investigate how the use of English picture books works for teaching young children. The main purposes include 1. investigating the reasons that the English teachers for young Children adopt English picture books; 2.comprehending the advantages of the application of English picture books in English language teaching; 3.understanding how the English teachers for young children select English picture books; 4.exploring how the English teachers for young children apply English picture books to teaching; 5.realizing the efforts that English picture books make on teaching; and 6.analyzing the limitations of the use of English picture books in English teaching. The methodology adopted in this study includes the interview method and the observational method. The researcher chooses eight Chinese English teachers in the central area of Taiwan in the way of judgmental sampling and has in-depth interviews with them. Two of the eight subjects are selected to conduct classroom observation in order to understand the application of English picture books in English language teaching. This study comes to the following conclusions: (1)Not many of the English teachers for young children apply English picture books to their teaching automatically, perhaps due to the time limitation or being confined to the commercial textbooks. (2)The benefits of the use of English picture books in teaching are quite a lot, which include inspiring learners’ imagination, creativity, cognitive ability, and arousing their interests in learning. (3)The selection of English picture books has to match the contents and theme topics of Chinese. The children’s age and language proficiency are also taken into account. The contents of the stories should be highly repetitive and predictable. In addition, the language of the stories and the illustrations have to be relevant to each other, and the size of English picture books had better not be smaller than A4 size. (4)All the subjects use the teaching modes which include the process of motivation inspiration, warm-up, story telling and review. The methods used most frequently are Total Physical Response and Communicative Approach. Songs and rhymes are often used as well. The seats are usually arranged as two vertical rows, ㄇ-shaped and semi circle, going with self-made pictures, flashcards, puppets and the relevant songs to explain the contents of the stories. The extended activities are mainly natural observation, art activities, role-play and drama. (5)The method of assessment is mainly observing the teacher-student interaction in the classroom. Besides, the greatest learning effectiveness of English picture books is to make children learn English easily and relaxingly so as to elevate students’ interests and motivation in English learning. (6)The use of English picture books is limited by the price, the selection of the topics, the volume of the books and parents. (7)The use of English picture books still has to emphasize appropriate amount of time and finishing telling stories at one time. Finally, according to the results of the study, some suggestions are brought up for educational authorities, parents, preschools and kindergartens, English teachers and future research.