TEACHING ENGLISH TENSE FOR YOUNG LEARNERS
THROUGH NEUROLINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING
(NLP)
Ahdi Riyono
Abstract
Most young learners
consider tense as one of the difficult parts of English lesson. It is due to
the differences between Indonesian and English. Therefore, teachers need to
take an immediate action to overcome this matter. Dealing with this, Jufrizal
(2008) suggests some steps to minimize the problem faced by Indonesian Students
by strengthening students’ awareness of the nature of English grammar. To achieve the purpose, daily practices must
be taken for granted. Since practices will make perfect. The purpose of
learning English is used to communicate with international communities.
Communication is nonverbal as well as verbal.
Neurolinguistic programming (NLP)
in English teaching can be used to help the students become aware at a feeling
level of the conceptual meaning of a grammatical structure. NLP is a collection
of techniques, patterns, and strategies for assisting effective communication,
personal growth and change, and learning. It is based on a series of underlying
assumptions about how the mind works and how people act and interact.
Keywords: Teaching English,
Young Learners, and Neurolinguistics Programming.
- Introduction
Most young learner considers tense as one of the difficult
parts of English lesson. This is because tense is difficult to master well by
the students. As a simple indicator, students commonly think that there are
twelve or maybe sixteen tenses in English. This conceptual confusion leads to
low performance to apply tense of English under the right circumstances. Tense has to do with time-relation, so that
tense are different forms, which a verb assumes to indicate the time of action
or state. Similarly, Comrie (1985) states that tense is a grammaticalized
expression in time. Sometimes we find difficulties to differ tense from time,
because according to Comrie (1985), the idea of locating situation in time is
purely a conceptual notion and independent of the range of distinction made in
particular language. In order to avoid this ambiguity, it is important to keep
the two concepts of time and tense strictly apart.
English is considered as tenseness language, meanwhile,
Indonesian can be categorized as tenseness language. In English, tense belongs to one of
grammatical categories indicating the time of the action or state through its
verb. Meanwhile, Indonesia
does not have grammatical category of tense to locate an event in time.
Therefore, in Indonesian, time of the action is realized using adverb of time.
- Teaching English for Young Learners
The Introduction of English in primary school relates to the
age factor. One of the basic underlying points is exploiting the greater
plasticity of the young child’ brain (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1999). Singleton
and Ryan (2001) presented a survey in regarding reasons for teaching English at
primarily level that do not rely on the claim of the best time to learn
language, they are:
1) Giving more opportunity to children understand foreign
cultures to be more tolerant to others, (2) maximizing learning time for
important languages-the earlier you start the more time you get, (3) Starting
with early foreign language instruction, so that on the text level language can
be used as an instructional medium.
It can be concluded that young learner have more changes than
adult to learn language since they have more advantageous natures. Other
suggestions proposed by Brumfit (1991 ) for better learning are:
v That the brain is
more adaptable before puberty than after, and that acquisition of languages is
possible without self consciousness at early age.
v That children have
fewer negative attitudes to foreign languages and cultures than adults, and
that consequently they are better motivated than adults.
v That children’s
language learning is more closely integrated with real communication because it
depends more on the immediate physical environment than does adult language.
v That children devote
vast quantities of time to language learning, compared with adults and they are
better they do more of it.
Neurolinguistic
programming (NLP) in English teaching can be used to help the students
become aware at a feeling level of the conceptual meaning of a grammatical
structure. NLP is about communication (Shipman, 2003:5). One of the principles
of NLP is that we are always communicating, and most of our communication is
other than words. In line with this, Revell and Norman, 1997:14) maintain that
NLP is … a
collection of techniques, patterns, and strategies for assisting effective
communication, personal growth and change, and learning. It is based on a
series of underlying assumption about how the mind works and how people act and
interact.
In addition, NLP is about how language affects us. Language
affects how we think and respond. The very process of converting experience
into language requires that we condense, distort, and summarize how we perceive
the world. NLP also provides questions and patterns to make communication more
as we intend. Learning language through
NLP can also add awareness and consumer protection for your mind. In education,
NLP’s practical applications include understanding how we learn and developing
strategies for both students and teachers. Through NLP, Teachers and parents
gain concrete methods for helping children well in school. Classroom teachers
are incorporating key pieces of the NLP approach into their teaching methods
and classroom management.
While in
learning, Ellis (1985) described a learning styles as the more or less
consistent way in which a person perceives, conceptualizes, organizes and
recalls information. Your students’ learning styles will be influenced by their
genetic make-up, their previous learning experiences, their culture and the
society they live in. As teachers, we should be aware that your students have a
range of learning styles
There are many
ways of looking at learning styles. Here are some of the most widely used
classification systems that have been developed. According to Richard Bandler
and John Grinder in the field of NLP, there are three kinds of learning styles.
1) Visual learners, these learners need to see the
teacher’s body language and facial expression to fully understand the content
of a lesson. They tend to prefer sitting at the front of the classroom to avoid
visual obstructions (e.g. people’s heads). They may think in pictures and learn
best from visual display including diagrams, illustrated handout, whiteboard
pictures, demonstrations, flipcharts and hand out. During a classroom
discussion, visual learning often prefers to take detailed notes to absorb the
information.
2). Auditory Learners, they learn best through verbal
information delivery, discussions, talking things through and listening to what
others have to say. Auditory learners interpret the underlying meanings of
speech through listening to tone of voice, pitch, speed and other nuances.
Written information may have little meaning until it is heard.
3). Kinesthetic learners, they learn best through a
hands-on approach, actively exploring the physical world around them. They may
find it hard to sit still for long periods and may become distracted by their
need for activity and exploration.
Berman (1998), cited by Brewster, Ellis and Girard (2008),
writes that in an average class of adults, twenty-nine per cent (29%) will be
predominantly visual learners, thirty-four percent (34%) auditory and thirty-seven
per cent (37%) kinesthetic. Then, he adds that the understanding of children
aged five to seven years old comes through the hands, eyes, and ears, so, the
physical world is dominant at all times. He also writes that most young
children have the ability to store memories by associating them with their
senses, and may even have the ability to ‘cross-sense’
- Learning Circle
David Kolb developed this system and first published it in
1984. Kolb’s learning theory sets out four distinct learning styles, which are
based on a four-stage learning circle:
a) Do (concrete
experience-demonstration, taking to others, observation).
b) Review
(Reflect on experience-what do you already know? / teacher assessment/ students
self-assessment of their work).
c) Learn
(abstract conceptualization-relate experience to theory).
d) Apply (active experimentation-how can I
do it better next time).
This learning circle suggests that teachers should plan
lessons that follow Kolb’s circle so that learning is well structured and so
that all styles are visited. Being aware
of sensory elements and ensuring that these also included in your teaching
styles will give your courses the most impact.
- Design of Language Learning
Four key
principles lie at the heart of NLP (O’connor and McDermott, 1996; revell and Norman,
1997; Richards and Rodgers, 2001).
- Outcomes: the goals or ends. NLP claims that knowing precisely what you want helps you achieve it. This principle can be expressed as “know what you want.”
- Rapport: a factor that is essential for effective communication-maximizing similarities and minimizing differences between people at a nonconscious level. This principle can be expressed as “Establish rapport with yourself and then with others.
- Sensory acuity: noticing what another person is communicating, consciously and nonverbally. This can be expressed as “use your senses. Look at, listening to, and feel what is actually happening.”
- Flexibility: doing things differently if what you are doing is not working: having a range of skills to do something else or something different. This can be expressed as “keep changing what you do until you get what you want.
Revell and Norman (1997) say that presupposition that guide to
language teaching is “Communication is nonverbal as well as verbal”- they
discuss the 2kinds of nonverbal messages teachers consciously or unconsciously
communicate to learners in classroom.
What do NLP language teachers do
that make them different from other language teachers? According to NLP, they seek to apply the
principles in their teaching and this leads to different responses to many
classroom events and processes. For example, one of the four central principles
of NLP centers on the need for “rapport”
Rylatt and Lohan (in Richards and
Rodgers, 2001) give the following examples of how a teacher might apply rapport
in responding to the following statements from students:
a)
I hate this stuff. It is such a waste of time.
b)
Everyone says that. It makes me sick.
c)
I can’t do it.
d)
This is all theory
In
establishing rapport, the teacher could respond:
a) Is a
part of you saying that you want to be sure your time is well spent today?
b) who
says that?
c) what,
specifically, can’t you do?
d) are
you saying you want practical suggestions?
- Procedure
Here is the procedure how to teach present continuous tense
through NLP. The lesson begins with a guided fantasy of eating a food item and
then reflecting on the experience.
- Students are told that they are going on an inner grammatical experience as you eat a biscuit.
- Check that they understand vocabulary of the experience (smell, taste, chew, swallow, bite, lick, etc).
- Students are asked to relax, close their eyes, and “go inside. “ Once “inside. “ they listen to the teacher-produced fantasy, which is given as the following:
- “Imagine a biscuit. A delicious biscuit. The sort you really like. Pick it up and look at it closely. Notice how crisp and fresh it is. Smell …….etc.
- Ask the students to describe how they are feeling now
- Ask them to say again the sentence that describes what they are feeling now.
- Put a large piece of paper on the wall with the words I am chewing the biscuit.
- Ask them to say the sentence “ I am really enjoying eating this biscuit”
- Conclusion
NLP practitioners believe that if language teachers adopt and
use the principles of NLP, they will become more effective teachers. In
language teaching, the appeal of NLP to some teachers stems from the fact that
it offers set of humanistic principles that provide either a new justification
for well-known techniques from the communicative or humanistic repertoire or
different interpretation of the role of the teacher and the learner, one in
harmony with many learner-centered, person-centered views.
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Jufrizal.
2008. ‘Minimizing Problems faced by Indonesian Students in Learning and Understanding
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