Fantasy Introduction

Fantasy THE COURSE
*has been developed in response to a need- children need to learn children's language through children's activities.

*It offers a new technique for the pre junior 4/7 classroom.

Fantasy is exploited as an educational concept in the young learners' foreign language class because it has world wide appeal –

"Fables and folklore from around the world provide an excellent starting point for work on cultural variations. Whatever the country of origin, the same personal qualities of honesty perseverance courage and consideration occur."
from "multicultural approaches to reading." 2.

Young learners are able to identify with similar basic principles and values already familiar in their own culture making English culturally more acceptable.

*As a technique it has been designed developed and used by the author in REAL teaching situations.

*It is essentially an enabling technique which facilitates the introduction and exploitation of play, total physical response and task based activities into the young child's foreign language classroom.

WHAT IS THE TECHNIQUE?
As a technique it has been tried and tested by the author and has proved to be very effective in the young children's classroom because-
*it exploits and stimulates the children's imagination letting them discover the language they want to know and use-in effect using the child's imagination as a resource in the language classroom.
* it is flexible and adaptable to different classroom settings especially those with limited budgets and resources.
*it bring structured meaningful play into the classroom.
*it helps overcome difficulties encountered by foreign children with English phonics.
*it facilitates input and helps generate output which is real and meaningful to children.
*it makes the doing and using elements of the course- task based activities. T.P.R. and play -now recognised as essential in primary EFL -more interesting and motivating therefore more effective.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
BY MAKING USE OF THE YOUNG CHILD'S ABILITY AND DELIGHT IN CREATING PLAYING AND LIVING IN A WORLD OF MAKE BELIEVE. learning English in part becomes a make believe game-"Let's pretent to be....../ we are in....." says the teacher. Young children know it's not true but are prepared to suspend their disbelief to enjoy themselves. The classroom can then become anything you want it to be, without the need for elaborate visual aids, with THIS tecnique children are usually happy to make their own.

LEARNING TO READ IS An IMPORTANT AND HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT achievement for a young child
Learning to read
* is a big step forward
* it makes them superior to younger brothers and sisters
* is appreciated even rewarded by parents and teachers
* is a skill to perform when confident
It is only natural young children learning to read in their own language are keen to learn to read "anything" especially this new thing mummy and daddy think is so important.

These young learners of English as foreign language need to be given strategies to deal with the new English words they encounter few course books currently on the market tackle this realistically. Instinctively they will test their growing knowledge of their first language grapheme/phoneme rules. Yet more difficulties are added to the learning of English and its grapheme/phoneme correspondence rules notorious for their complexity.

This course takes a positive firm approach to the teaching of reading employing phonics which are made child friendly through the courses exploitation of fantasy. Phonics are recognised as integral to the structure and effective progression of the course meeting the demands of the pre-school infant learner as their grapheme/phoneme grows and develops. Fantasy also permits varied and creative use of storytelling. Various techniques are used to stimulate reading for meaning and pleasure thus consolidating the work on the mechanics of reading

* ABOVE ALL IT IS FRESH AND EXCITING AS IT GOES FURTHER THAN ANY OTHER EXISTING COURSES IN ITS APPLICATION OF FANTASY, not only in the literary sense but develops and extends FANTASY into a teaching medium exploiting the child's imagination as a resource in the classroom.