Teaching Vocabulary cannot be defined apart from learning. The ways of teaching vocabulary at elementary school, they are:
- Teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the condition for learning. Your understanding of how the learner learns will determine your philosophy of education, your teaching style, your approach, methods, and classroom techniques.
- Teaching process involves many aspects, they are students, teacher, materials, etc. Their environment causes the teaching learning process or activities run easily. Teaching does not come from teacher only, but also comes from radios, newspapers, books, internet, etc. It means that the role of teaching is not only as a formal but also as an informal.
- Learning by doing is usually done the students in elementary school settings. It means that they are active that passive. It is connected with their characteristic.
From above, teaching for children must present the four skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing but it should think about the stage of the age of the learner. Furthermore, it is important to make the students enjoyable with the lesson. The other ways of teaching vocabulary for increasing the vocabulary, they are: (1) get your class interested and involved, (2) break down and learning new words, (3) learn vocabulary through reading, (4) incorporate vocabulary into the classroom environment.
Requirements for Effective Teaching of English to Young Learners
Musthafa (2010) stated that since last decade, public interest in English for Young Learners (TEYL) has become enhanced. This is evidenced in increasing number of district and city governments all over the country which offer English classes at the elementary school level. While decisions to teach English to elementary school pupils have been made, requirements for teachers to be able to teach English well at this level are seldom discussed in public forum. As results, our knowledge about this important issue is very limited.
In addition, the current practice seems to have been guided by a very serious misconception that is that teaching English to elementary school children does not require the same English proficiency as teaching English at a more advanced level. If it is not appropriately rectified, this mis-informed program implementation is bound to failure. Teachers of English to young learners should know and be able to do so that program planners have a relatively clear understanding of all the components necessary to create a positive environment for English teaching and learning at elementary school level in Indonesia.
The bulk of the required knowledge base and skills has been synthesized from multiple sources and these requirements will be organized into five pillars relative to (1) who children are, (2) how the children learn, (3) how the children learn a language, (4) how Indonesian children learn English as a foreign language, and (5) how teachers can facilitate children learning English as a foreign language.