A curriculum design of teaching English to young learners in elementary education undergraduate program

The aim of the present study is to design an instructional curriculum of teaching English to young learners in elementary education undergraduate program. As regulated by the law, elementary school teachers have to teach English to children when the English teachers are not sufficient in number. However, as a result of the document analysis conducted it has been found out that the undergraduate teaching program does not prepare the prospective teachers to teach English at primary level, which results in a need to design a curriculum of teaching English to young learners in elementary education undergraduate program. The data of this mixed method study were collected through semi-structured interview, written interview, reflection paper and a scale from elementary school teachers and lecturers from from lnguage education and elementary education departments. The curriculum designed based on the interview results, literatüre review and document analysis was applied to 27 third grade elementary education undergraduate students studying at Kütahya Dumlupınar University. To get feedback about the application of the design, reflection papers were collected at the beginning, middle and end of the term from the student teachers who took the course opened to do the pilot study of the design. As a result, it was found out that the prospective teachers' self-confidence and competencies of teaching English to young learners have increased. Keywords: Curriculum design, Teaching English to young learners, Elementary education, teacher training, teaching English as a foreign language in Elementary Education Program.