The teaching of English as a foreign language is now, in many places, expanding into primary (elementary) school settings

The Topic Approach: Animals

In thinking about animals the following content might be identified:

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  Kinds of animals;
  
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  Physical characteristics of animals.
  

Beginning with this content, it would then be possible to identify specific language-learning goals, which would be that children would be able to:

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  Identify a variety of animals by name (This is/That is a ___.)
  
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  Describe animals according to their size (It’s big, small, etc.), colour (It’s brown, white, etc.)
  

The learners could use what they already knew as they worked with the subject matter of animals in English as they increased their English abilities. The activity, which is described below, is appropriate because it involves children actively, because allows children and teacher work together and learn from each other, and because paired and group work provide for the social interaction and the experimentation with language that are central parts of language development.
Pairs of children receive cards with pictures of animals on them, but not al the pairs receive the same animals. One at a time, the teacher holds up a card and names an animal, saying for example: «Here is a picture of a horse. Who else has a picture of a horse?» all of the pairs who have a horse give the cards to the teacher, and teacher and children can count the number of horse cards that were distributed around the room. This activity may be repeated several times as a way of introducing the names of different animals. The cards could also be used for paired games such as Concentration or Memory, where children take pairs of cards, turn them upside down and mix them up, and then take turns trying to match the pairs by turning over two cards at a time. To make language essential to the game, a rule is that when you find a pair you have to identify the animal. Additionally, animal bingo games could be constructed to identify particular animals within the context of participating in a game that is fun.
The activity just described is tied both to the topic of animals and to the language goals set out previously. The focus of this activity has been listening and speaking – that is, children’s understanding and production of spoken English. (14).

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