TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MAKATON IN A NURSERY CLASSROOM

Abstract

The present study examined teachers’ perspectives of a visual support based language teaching tool ‘Makaton’ for preschool students in early years classrooms. Despite being used worldwide, only a few studies on Makaton as a tool to support spoken English in preschool education were conducted. This paper focuses on a study of Makaton being used at a school in the capital of Kazakhstan where students learn English as a foreign language. The qualitative case study drawing on data from class observations and interviews with teachers focused on the extent to which teachers believe this tool facilitates the development of basic functional English for EY learners. This paper will share results which reveal teacher perceptions of the positive benefits Makaton has on the development of language for ESL students and challenges in using this tool in an EY environment. The results are useful for EY pedagogues who are interested in exploring alternative methods to support preschool English learners. It is also a novelty study as Makaton is not widely used and there has not been any research done on Makaton as an ESL teaching tool in the context of Kazakhstani EY education. Therefore, this paper aims to stimulate dialogue on the use of Makaton in the local context.