Characteristic of Young Learner

Characteristic of Young Learner When you are a teacher, you should know the characteristic of children, or the characteristic of young learner that you taught. Young learners mean children from the first year of formal schooling (5 or 6 year old) to eleven or twelve year age. Young learners have own special characteristics that differentiate them from adult learners. There should be known and understood by the teacher to give contribution to improve their quality of teaching and learning process. In relation to this, Halliwel (1992: 3-5) clarifies the characteristics of children; 1. Children are already very good in interpreting meaning without necessarily understanding the individual word. 2. Children already have great skill in using limited language creativity. 3. Children frequently learn indirectly rather than directly. 4. Children take good pleasure in finding and creating fun in what they do. 5. Children have a ready imagination, children words are full of imagination and fantasy, and it is more than simply matter of enjoyment. The characteristic of young learners mentioned by Clark (1990: 6-8): a. Children are developing conceptually: they develop their way of thinking from the concrete to the abstract thing. b. Children have no real linguistics, different from the adult learners that already have certain purpose in learning language, for instances, to have a better job, children rarely have such needs in learning a foreign language. They learn subject what school provide for them. c. Children are still developing; they are developing common skill such as turn talking and the use of body language. d. Young children very egocentric, they tend to resolve around themselves. e. Children get bored easily. Children have no choice to attend school. The lack of the choice means that class activities need to be fun interesting and exciting as possible by setting up the interesting activities.