INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, English is very important to everyone living in this world. In

Indonesia, English is taught in every school, from the lowest level until the
highest one. It is taught from the level of kindergarten, elementary school, until
the other higher levels of schools. Teaching English to young learners especially
in kindergarten and elementary school is very different from teaching learners in
junior or senior high school. The teachers should be more patient, motivated,
creative, and innovative. They should also seem to be happy in all the time. Those
characteristics are needed to make young learners to be interested in learning. In
addition, to make the situation of the class alive and cheery can make them to be
more motivated to learn English.
Teaching young children needs some more various activities to be
applied so they would not feel bored. Games and songs can be used to vary the
students’ activities. Games can help young learners to be easier in learning
English since it is fun. Furthermore, they usually include physical movements that
can make young learners happy. They would be more motivated when they are
interested. There are two kinds of game, cooperative games and competitive
games. Cooperative games focus on the success of the team as a whole. Here, the
students work cooperatively in group. So, the games intend more in the
cooperation and interaction of the students in a group to achieve their own
common goals. While competitive games are games that tend to focus on winning
or losing. Here, the students usually work individually to be succeeded. The
students can also work in group in a game on purpose to defeat other groups.
These games are called cooperative-competitive games. As well as the games,
songs also make them to be happier and feel fresher. These songs content of
rhymes, and music to make them enjoy the lesson.
In this paper, I would like to try to build those kinds of activities in
teaching English by imagining as the real teacher in young learners’ school. Here,
I should be able to manage 70 minutes lesson time that is divided into 50 minutes
for the teaching and learning activities include the presentation and 20 minutes for

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applying games and songs. I have decided the topic that I will use in my teaching
activities is about “Transportation”. I decided the number of students of my class
is 24 students, so I can divide them into 4 groups in the game section.
Based on the textbook used by the second grade students in elementary
school titled “Stairway”, this topic belongs to second semester lessons in almost
the end of the all lessons in this grade. Before this lesson, those second grade
students have learned about many things, such as numbers, animals, vegetables,
days and months, etc. I choose this topic to be learned because it is interesting.
Here, I want to improve the students’ speaking skill and the components involved
are pronunciation and vocabulary. The media which is used in my teaching is
flashcards for presenting the materials of this topic. I use flashcards to make the
students to be clearer achieving the lesson since they are colorful and attractive.
The game that I use is named “Arrange and Match”. Actually the basic of this
game is arranging jumbled words, but I modified it by adding matching activity to
make is more various. This game is a kind of cooperative competitive games
because the students will be divided in groups and they should work as hard as
possible to defeat the other groups. Moreover, the song I that I will use is titled
“Traffic Light Song”. This song will be taught in the last part to make the students
feel fresh after achieving the lesson.
Those are the introduction of the paper. Additionally, this paper is made
to fulfill the final assignment of “Language Games and Songs” subject. I expect
that this paper can be useful for the readers.

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 CONTENT

A. STUDENTS’ ACTIVITIES
Among 70 minutes lesson time for English subject in a day, I will use the
first 50 minutes for warming up, introducing and presenting the new material, and
then giving the students task about the material.
In the beginning of the lesson, I will introduce the new material with the
topic “Transportation” to the learners by asking them about how they go to the
school or how they usually go to the market or other places. To make them
understand what I say, I will mix the language with Bahasa so it will be easier to
follow. I expect that they will be interested and answer my question by saying two
or more words about the names of vehicles.
After they answer some questions I gave, I will start the new materials
presentation. Here, I use flashcards to teach them about the topic. I have already
prepared some flashcards about the topic. There are some pictures of vehicles and
their names below the pictures. These pictures are also colorful, so that the
students can feel interested to the lesson. First, I will tell them the names of the
vehicles one by one with correct pronunciation so the students will produce good
pronunciation too when they are asked to say the names of those vehicles too. For
example, when I hold a picture of bus, I say it loudly with the correct
pronunciation “Bus”. Then I will hold another picture of bicycle and say its name
and so on. In the second step, I ask the students to repeat saying after me. Here I
will directly correct them if they make mistakes in pronouncing the words. In the
third step, I will show them the expression that usually used about this topic that
can be seen below:

“How do you go to school?”

“I go to school by bus.”

“How do you go to the market?”

“I go to the market by motorcycle.”

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 After I finish writing the expressions above, I read it first, then I ask the
students to read it loudly twice. Furthermore, I ask them change the name of
vehicles above with the name of picture of vehicle that I hold, and so on. Up to
this step, I expect the students will remember the names of vehicles with the
pictures and understand about the expressions that can be used in talking about
transportation.
Finishing with the presentation and repetition, I continue the activity with
their practice. Here, I intend to improve the students’ ability in speaking by using
the expressions above. In doing this activity, first I ask the students to use the
expressions to make conversation to each other. For example, I ask a student (just
say that her name is Ana) to ask another student called Jerry, for instance, about
how he goes to school based on his real life. The conversation will be produced as
the example below:

Ana : “Jerry, how do you go to school?”

Jerry : “I go to school by bicycle.”

Then, I will ask some other students to do the same activity to practice
their speaking ability. The conversation here will be built up when I ask another
student to report what his or her friend said, but still in present tense form. Of
course, I first give them an example to practice it. For example, when I ask Ana to
ask Jerry how he goes to school, Jerry answers “I go to school by bicycle”, then I
say “He goes to school by bicycle” The situation will be imagined as follow:

Ana : “Jerry, how do you go to school?”

Jerry : “I go to school by bicycle.”

Then, I ask Ria, for example, to tell the class about what Jerry has said
about the transportation, so she will tell them by saying:

“He goes to school by bicycle.”

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 So, here there are three students involved, the first student as the
questioner, the second student as the answerer, and the third one as the reporter.
When the answerer is a girl, the reporter will change their report to “She goes to
school by bicycle” since consider to the textbook, they have already known about
plural/singular pronouns and also the verb agreements that should be used.
These conversations can be built up to be more various by changing the
places as the destination and also changing the names of vehicles. In the end of
practice section here, I expect that the students would have mastered the
vocabulary of vehicle names, can pronounce them correctly, and also can use the
expressions in their speaking in order to improve their speaking ability.

B. GAME
After the presentation and questions and answers done, I use the 20
minutes left to teach the students a game and a song. First, I would like to teach
the students using a game called “Arrange and Match”. This game belongs to
cooperative and competitive game because the students will work in group while
they have to be as fast as possible to finish their work too. Here, the students
given some jumbled words about the names of vehicle to arrange the letters in
good orders, and then they will match the correct words with the pictures of
vehicle given. Beside it is fun, this game also used to build their sense of
cooperation and build better interactions among the members. Furthermore, the
purpose of this game is to check their vocabulary mastering in the previous
section. The steps of doing this game are:
1. Divide the students into 4 groups.
First of all, I as the teacher divide the students into 4 groups. Pretend that the
number of the students in my class is 24 students, so each group will have 6
members. I ask the students to count 1 to 4 to determine in which group they
belong to. The students that have the same number will be in one group.
Then, they should gather with their group members.
2. Tell the students about how to play the game.

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 After the students have been sitting together with their own group members,
the teacher tells them about how to play the game.
The role of the game here is the each group will be given an answer sheet, 5
small rolled sheets consist of jumbled words of the names of vehicle, 5 small
picture cards of the vehicles, and a small bottle of glue. After the game
started, the students open the small rolled sheets first, think about it, and then
try to find the correct names of vehicle that are jumbled before. In this case,
each of five the students in group can take one rolled sheet and to be
responsible to that thing. Then, the second thing that they should do is find
the picture that match to his/her answer. The other one student has to write
the correct words and stick the pictures in the right places too. They should do
the task as soon as possible because the time will be limited by the teacher.
3. Give each group the instruments needed (an answer sheet, 5 small picture
cards of vehicle, 5 small rolled sheets consist of jumbled words about the
names of vehicle, and a small bottle of paper glue).
As I told before, the teacher will give each group the equipments needed.
They are 1 answer sheet, 5 small picture cards of vehicle, 5 small rolled
sheets consist of jumbled words about the names of vehicle, and a small
bottle of paper glue. Those are given after the students have been divided in
groups.
4. The teacher is ready with his/her stopwatch.
Here, the teacher prepares a stopwatch to limit the time for the students
working.
5. The game is started.
After all the groups have their own equipments and the teacher is also ready
with the stopwatch, the game is ready to be started. The teacher gives a cue to
the students like “Go!” for them to start the game. Then, students start to
working with the group to fulfill the requirements of this game.
6. It is given 5 minutes to finish their works.
The duration or the time given for the students to complete the task is 5
minutes only. The teacher uses the stopwatch to limit the time.

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7. The students work in their each group.
The members of each group will be busy with their own work to complete the
task as soon as possible to defeat the other groups. Every member in one
group should help each other to do the task as much as they can. Here, the
students’ cooperation is the most important one to achieve their common goal
and win the game.
8. Submit the answer sheet.
When the time is over, all the groups must submit their answer sheets to the
teacher to be corrected by the teacher. If some of the groups have finished
their works before the time is over, they should not wait until the time is over
and submit their works as soon as possible.
9. The group with the work that is the fastest submitted and the most correct one
will be the winner.
After all the answer sheets have been submitted, the teacher will correct them
one by one together with the students. So, they can know whether their works
are correct or not and know the corrections as well. First, the teacher should
order the answer sheets from the fastest to the latest submitted. Then, they
will be corrected one by one. If the fastest one has many mistakes, it could
not be the winner, so the teacher will compare it to the second one, and so on.
But, if the fastest one has the answers all correct, it will absolutely be the
winner of this game.
10. The other groups give applause and say “Congratulations!” to the winner.
I will not punish the loser nor give a prize to the winner because it is not a
good thing to do to young learners. I just simply ask the other groups which
are lost to give a compliment “Congratulations!” to the winner, and the
winner should answer “Thank you!” to the others. Here, I try to teach them to
be respectful to everybody and not to be spiteful to someone else.

C. SONG
To complete my teaching activity, in the end of the lesson, I ask them to
sing a song titled “Traffic Light Song” This song is also related to the topic

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“Transportation”. It is about the traffic light on the road. I use this song to make
the students feel relax and fresh after they use their brain to focus on the materials
given, and also to complete the task during the game. The lyrics of this song are
written here:

Red light, red light, what do you say

I say stop, and stop right away
Yellow light, yellow light, what do you mean
I mean wait, till the light goes green
Green light, green light, what do you say
I say go, go right away

In teaching this song, the first step that I will do is read the lyrics with
correct pronunciation and the students repeat directly what I have read. Then, I
will sing the song with the right rhythm and intonation and followed by body
movements. For the command like “Stop, and stop right away” I cross my hands
to symbolize a restriction because the meaning red light symbol is to stop all the
vehicles and restrict them to ride. When the song turns to the command “Wait till
the light goes green” I use my right hand to move like I am pushing a door. I do it
to symbolize that when the light is yellow, the vehicles should wait until the light
turns to green. Then, when the song turns to the last part that commands “go, go
right away” I pretend that I am going to run, but what I do is just running in place
a little. To make it clearer, I will sing it twice so that the students can understand
the rhythm and the intonation like I taught to them and also the body movements
of this song. After they seem understand, I ask them to stand up and sing the song
together with the body movements too. In the last, I expect the students feel happy
and relax after singing this song as the ending of English lesson on that day. So,
they will be ready to get other lessons next to it.

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 CONCLUSION

Teaching English to young learners is different from teaching English to

adults. In teaching young learners, it needs some more various activities to be
applied so they would not feel bored, happy and fresh. Games and songs can be
used to vary their activities and make learning more fun and understandable.
The example of application of teaching English to young learners using
game and song can be seen in the previous section above. There, the target
learners of my teaching are the second grade elementary school students. The
topic that I have chosen is “Transportation”. One of the English skills has been
chosen to teach them is speaking through short conversation activities among the
students. Through those activities the students should be able to use the
expressions that talking about “transportation” in communication, of course with
correct pronunciation too. These activities are held before the game and song
section.
After the presentation and students’ activities section, a game named
“Arrange and Match” is used to make learning to be more fun. There, the students
are divided into some groups to work together in completing the task. The sense
of cooperation here is more intended even though in the end of the game there are
the winner and the losers of this game.
To complete the teaching activity, the teacher use a song titled “Traffic
Light Song” to make the students feel fresh. Here, there are some physical
movements in this song, so they can relax their brain and also their body after the
presentation and game sections. Furthermore, the students will be ready for the
next lessons will be given.
The general expectation of the activities above is the students can feel
more fun, interested, and motivated to learn English so they can achieve the lesson
as maximum as possible. So, the purposes of English teaching and learning of
young learners can be successfully obtained.