Do you think the English kids learn is appropriate to their needs? Many kids would be alble to identify the word “barn” but not “scooter”.
It really depends on how clearly teachers give their students definitions. Taiwanese English teachers commonly have the wrong idea of “bread” and “toast” or “hamburger” and “sandwich.”
I think students here should learn how to talk about what’s around them and what concerns them first. If there is no barn in Taiwan, they will surely have difficulties memorizing the word.
Scooter, betelnut, night market, oyster omelet… I would teach this kind words too…
[quote=“AAF”]Do you think the English kids learn is appropriate to their needs? Many kids would be alble to identify the word “barn” but not “scooter”.
[/quote]
Errrm, I think kids need to learn how to engage brains first, the reality is that 95% of the kids learning Ostrich over Street Dog are never going to actually speak English in the FIRST place. The question is a bit like putting the cart before the horse (at least down here, mebbe Taipei is different, dunno 
).
I also think that kids need to learn words that foreigners use, they really aren’t going to be speaking English amongst themselves. Barn is quite important, actually…lots of idioms built around it.
I’ve just finished teaching one of my classes the names of the planets in our solar system. 
The big glowing yellow ball in the center is Taiwan. The first round object is Jinmen. The seond is Matzu :p…
I seriously do NOT envy you…
My-Mercury
Very-Venus
Educated-Earth
Mother-Mars
Just-Jupiter
Showed-Saturn
Us-Uranus
Nine-Neptune
Planets-Pluto
This should help them. I always get the two Ms mixed up though.
L.
I agree. Some words are not as useful as others.
acearle wrote:
Even if these kids go to an English-speaking country, barn would not be the most important of words to know. Furthermore, English does not only serve as a means of communicating toforeigners. It also serves as a lingua franca among different Asian nations and for the world at large.
Barn is not very useful for spoken communication in Taiwan. However, if you were to try reading American reading books for young readers, the word “scooter” would be unimportant, while “barn” pops up in a surprising number of books. Thus, I feel that for reading, barn is a truly useful word, while scooter is not.
Maybe we shouln’t be reading “My Pet Goat” and other foreign books for Taiwanese kids, but books written by foreigners, about Taiwan for Taiwanese kids.
“cha ching”! $$$$$$$ :dance:
Me thinks I just heard a mighty fine money making idea that also doubles a a good resource for the local population. Thanks! Now its off to the old dusty drawing board…
What were you born in a barn?
Shut the damn Door!
[quote=“derek1978”]“cha ching”! $$$$$$$ :dance:
Me thinks I just heard a mighty fine money making idea that also doubles a a good resource for the local population. Thanks! Now its off to the old dusty drawing board…[/quote]
I hope you are serious, because you can do exactly what you said. However, you have to sell your ideas to a publishing company. Once I went for an interview and I was told that they only print books that have been “ordered” by customers. You alsso have to work within the limitations of the MOE. There’s a word list, for instance. Wouldn’t it be cool if some of us worked together on a project. Even if we didn’t make a lot of money,we could still get recognition for a job well done!
What were you born in a barn?
Shut the damn Door!
[/quote]
A more apprppriate idiom would be:
What were you born in? A buxiban?
We could call the group The Society for the Promotion of English that is Appropriate to Kids/Kindergarteners/Kindergartens or SPEAK. 
:roflmao:
From my language-teaching experience (long time ago…) I must say that students learn faster when they deal with things they are interested in. That can be things around them (life in Taiwan), sports on TV (the NBA), movies (Harry Potter), or writing letters to (or better communicating via MSN with) a foreign friend. Every teacher should take some time to figure out what the students are interested in and help and encourage them to talk about it in the foreign language. I guess most students would rather know what’s going on in a bar than a barn…
What’s wrong with that? Sure, I guess if you just drill the spelling for a while, play some stupid sticky ball game for 10 minutes with it, and then give them a quiz, it’s not a particularly good lesson.
But I’ve done a whole unit on basic astronomy to a bunch of 8-year olds. Taught them how the planets go around the sun, the moon goes around the Earth, why Mercury and Venus are hotter and Mars and the rest are colder, how long it takes for the Earth to rotate on its axis (i.e. why there is day and night), how long it takes for the Earth to go around the sun, where the seasons come from, taught them how huge the distances were (i.e. the distance from the moon to the Earth is however many thousands times bigger than the distance from Yilan to Taibei), etc.
At the end of it all, I had my students recreate the solar system with all the planets going around the sun. It was one of my more productive lessons.
Maybe we shouln’t be reading “My Pet Goat” and other foreign books for Taiwanese kids, but books written by foreigners, about Taiwan for Taiwanese kids.[/quote]
Again, why are the Taiwanese learning English to communicate with other Taiwanese? Seems that they should be learning what is necessary to communicate with them thar outsiders 
…
Otherwise, what’s the point of learning English, no one really WANTS the recipie for chou dofu …
What’s wrong with that? Sure, I guess if you just drill the spelling for a while, play some stupid sticky ball game for 10 minutes with it, and then give them a quiz, it’s not a particularly good lesson.
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I agree, then again 10 minutes is all I get to devote to vocabulary in any one class before having to move on to other aspects of the language (ie: Grammar, phonics, reading).
[quote=“alidarbac”]But I’ve done a whole unit on basic astronomy to a bunch of 8-year olds. Taught them how the planets go around the sun, the moon goes around the Earth, why Mercury and Venus are hotter and Mars and the rest are colder, how long it takes for the Earth to rotate on its axis (i.e. why there is day and night), how long it takes for the Earth to go around the sun, where the seasons come from, taught them how huge the distances were (i.e. the distance from the moon to the Earth is however many thousands times bigger than the distance from Yilan to Taibei), etc.
At the end of it all, I had my students recreate the solar system with all the planets going around the sun. It was one of my more productive lessons.[/quote]
That’s the kind of lesson I would love to give, but like most buxibans, mine is focused upon getting through the books as quickly as possible. The lesson you gave may have been useful to my students, but they already knew there are 10 planets, not 9 as stated in the text book.
In any event, the question is how appropriate is the English you have to teach? I would have to say being able to name the planets in English is utterly useless no matter how good the lesson is.
NOTE: No sticky balls were used in the teaching of this lesson.
Good post. I’m tutoring a couple of 12-year-old boys at the moment, and they were instantly more interested when the conversation turned to the World Cup - as Australia just beat Japan a few days before I started teaching them. 
(On a side note to this, I once played this game with them from Dave’s ESL Cafe…one of the scenarios I came up with for ‘What would you do if…’ was Taiwan winning the World Cup. They liked that! )
One of them had read Harry Potter (in Chinese of course - they’re only 12!) and we talked about Book 6 for a little while in English. I’d read it too… I admit it!
I don’t have much experience teaching, but I really want to keep them interested. I agree about teaching them useful vocabulary. We went to the park one day where I played a few games of ‘I-Spy’. One of the things I picked out was ‘scooter’, and no, they didn’t know the word.