reflection week 3

This week was the third time I attend to “Resources” class. For this week, we had to form a six group. Each member had been chosen by Madam Foziah randomly. Each group will be given a topic to be discussed and then present. The topic was taken from chapter one in book entitle ‘Teaching English in the Primary Classroom’ (Susan Halliwel).

For the first chapter (Working with Young Language Learners), we learn that children do not come to the language classroom empty-handed because they bring with them an already well established set of instincts, skills and characteristics which will help them to learn another language.

There are 6 sub topics in this chapter. For group work, each group was given one topic to be discussed in group and then present to other groups. The subtopics are the qualities that help children in learning foreign language which are:

1. Children’s ability to grasp meaning.

2. Children’s creative use of limited language resources

3. Children’s capacity

for indirect learning

4. Children’s instinct fo

r play and fun

5. The role of imagination

6. The instinct for interaction and talk

My group was assigned to discuss and present subtopic number 5 which is “The Role of Imagination”. But because of time was not enough, my group has to delay our presentation to week 4.

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge - that myth is more potent

than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts."

- Robert Fulghum

The quotation gives us some clues about the role of imagination. Imagination can be define as the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or not previously known or experienced. Children delight in imagination and fantasy. In primary school, children are busily making sense of the world around them. For example they identify pattern and also deviations in the pattern.

Language teaching should be concerned with real life, but it was a great pity if we were so concern on promoting reality in the classroom that we forgot that reality for children includes imagination and fantasy. The act of fantasizing, of imagining, is very much an authentic part of being a child.

If we accept the role of imagination in children’s lives we can see that it provides another very powerful stimulus for real language use. It is very important for us to find ways of building imagination in the language classroom. For example, by asking them to draw their imaginary pets and then write description about the pets. By that, we can stimulate the children’s creative imagination so that they want to use the language to share their ideas.

In conclusion, this week I learned that imagination gives very important role in child language learning.