Children start their formal English education in the first grade of primary school. Starting to teach a foreign language at such an early stage, the didactical approaches to teaching English have to be taken into consideration, since they differ from teaching older students. Children can take part in informal English learning while in kindergarten, where different language schools offer their English classes. Informal education can be spread through-out someone’s life. Summer language camps are also a way of informal language learning where language learning is often combined with other activities. There are many pros in learning English in such environment, since it is more relaxed, which is also one of the reasons why it’s easier to use innovative teaching approaches. Despite its relaxed environment, a language camp must still follow some guidelines on how to teach a foreign language, but at the same time has the ability to involve local environment in learning.
In this master’s thesis, we wanted to see how to create a one-week English language programme in a local environment with regards to appropriate didactical approaches and including local environment as much as possible. We conducted a case study on an example of a one-week English language programme in a small Slovenian town. We compared the didactic approaches; the innovative methods; the characteristic of good summer camps and the involvement of the local environment in theory and in practice, as seen on a project. We carried out interviews with seven participants and three teachers to find out, what they think about the programme and what they think could be improved. The results mostly showed that the programme is following the guidelines for teaching a foreign language and the National syllabus for English. The teachers were using innovative teaching approaches and including local environment in different ways – from discussions with local people and local farmers to visiting natural local sights. The interviews with the participants showed that children like this kind of summer learning and thought the activities were interesting. The teachers emphasised the advantages of this way of working, including autonomy of the teacher and easier differentiation of work because of smaller groups of children.
|
