EFL TEACHING THROUGH SONGS AND RHYMES FOR PRESCHOOLERS IN ALBANIA, CASE STUDY

Abstract

Challenging or not, foreign language teaching in the early stages of kids’ schooling is often considered a daunting but yet appealing experience for the young learners. Bridging the kindergarten stage into the preschool one is often accompanied by emotional, linguistic, psychological difficulties which considerably influence their individual acquisition abilities. Incorporation of foreign language learning among preschoolers is often believed to cause language interference and confusion with the native language. However, making a careful selection and application of the teaching strategies and materials for the preschool young learners can often guarantee success in the development of kids’ learning abilities.
The aim of this paper is to highlight a) the importance of songs and rhymes in EFL teaching to preschoolers; b) the benefits of EFL teaching through songs and rhymes for preschoolers, c) the improvement of kids’ perception skills in their early stage of education. The preschool classes in two educational institutions in Elbasan constituted the target group for this study. During the first semester of the school year 2019-2020, English language teachers of the target schools were engaged in conducting EFL classes through songs and rhymes for this category of pupils, over a period of seven months. Observations and teachers’ questionnaires were conducted during this period of time, assisting in gathering concrete data concerning the issue. The elaboration of the data displayed outstanding results. Songs and rhymes although they mostly break standard grammatical rules when it comes to sentence structures, they provided motivation and a great source of vocabulary enrichment for the kids. Moreover, observations showed that EFL teaching through songs and rhymes helped in increasing literacy among the target preschoolers, as well as they provided early phonetic development which contributes positively in both the mother tongue and foreign language acquisition. Therefore, incorporating and applying EFL teaching to preschoolers through songs and rhymes is accompanied by linguistic and psychological benefits highly contributing to their acquisition abilities in the future.