[quote=“shedastud”]How many times have you seen this thread in the past three years?
For those of you with no people skills, fear not. There’s a version of people-skills here known as “get online, learn 50 games and 20 songs”.
Whenever you notice one of the kids fall aslee,’ play a game. Also, call kids to the board and have them teach to the rest of the class.[/quote]
[quote=“Durins Bane”][quote=“shedastud”]How many times have you seen this thread in the past three years?
I take it you work at a chain school.[/quote][/quote]
So at Elite Private Schools you don’t teach English, nor play games but rather charm 7 year oldes kids with your lovely smile, as frequently as possible? Guess I am working at a chain school. Then again I don’t.
[quote=“shedastud”]How many times have you seen this thread in the past three years?
For those of you with no people skills, fear not. There’s a version of people-skills here known as “get online, learn 50 games and 20 songs”.
Whenever you notice one of the kids fall aslee,’ play a game. Also, call kids to the board and have them teach to the rest of the class.[/quote]
[quote=“shedastud”][quote=“Durins Bane”]
I take it you work at a chain school.[/quote]
So at Elite Private Schools you don’t teach English, nor play games but rather charm 7 year oldes kids with your lovely smile, as frequently as possible? Guess I am working at a chain school. Then again I don’t.[/quote]
If I tried to pass off your suggestion as teaching, well…I would have lost my job 3-1/2 years ago and have pissed off a lot of parents. I don’t think durins bane meant “chain school”. I think he meant “bad school”. Hell, their parents could rent a video and get better results than having a teacher who just played games with their kids and had them teach to keep the others from falling asleep.
And memorizing songs and games will not make you a better, more agreeable person. If someone would just as soon berate a child for minor issues as look at them, then there’s no song or game out there that will change that behavior.
Anyone who takes exception to this, remember that there are a fair number of buxibans in Taiwan making good money with teachers doing exactly this. It’s possible to teach English by using games (he, and I, mean “language-teaching games,” not just any old game); it frequently works better than a strictly academic approach, particularly for young children. I well remember one buxiban I worked at for a short time in Korea, where the boss allowed no games, and insisted on a very serious, scholarly approach. She claimed that’s what the parents wanted; maybe that’s what the parents asked for, but the result was nightmare classes where the children learned nothing, except maybe that studying English was a pointless waste of time.
There were some 7- and 8-year-old kids who attended that cram school an hour a day, 5 days a week for two years, and ended up knowing practically no English at all, not even the alphabet. Kids the same age at Kojen, learning through games, master more in just a couple of weeks.
I think you have to look at it as a business, as DB says. There is plenty of money to be made doing exactly what you’re told by a school. If they tell you to sing and act like a bollocks, and they’ll pay you to do it, then you’ve got a paying job. There are plenty of people out there who want just that, a clown to entertain their kids. Many people, myself included, can’t hack that because it makes you feel like a complete waster.
However, there are plenty of people who are here for a year or two, and would be quite willing to act the bollocks for a year or two, make some dosh then bugger off. Which is fine. The school is happy, the parents are happy, and the kids are happy. Whether they learn anything - who knows? The one thing you learn very quickly from studying second language acquisition is that no-one knows for sure how it happens.
It happens mostly as a result of massive amounts of roughly tuned (or not) input that relates to the persons needs or interest in some way. Students need to co-operate with their natural language learning ability. They need to build or find their own English environments and then notice which words fall together in which contexts and for which intended effect. If children were allowed to watch as much television as they wanted, but only if it was in English, I suspect that they would teach themselves an awful lot.
On a related note I should mention that I am becoming more and more committed to the notion that the most accesible English environment for most adult students is their television. Teaching them to make the most of that environment is mostly what I do these days. It is a lot more complicated than one might expect.
I’m not sure about a lot of students, you must have hit a rich vein there, but…I admire them as well and God(in a Zen/Sufi sense) bless them; they make the job worthwhile.
Gubo - While I absolutely will hold to the idea that a massive amount of input is essential, I also agree that second language learners need to find themselves in situations where they need to use what they have learned recently, along with what they may have learned in the past. The environment that I am creating does both - it ensures adequate (perhaps excessive) input and requires that a ceratin amount of analysis and use of that input occurs. An opportunity is also created to record that input in a way that makes it accesible for review. It is definitely NOT a system for people who need a lot of structure in their language study. As one of my students put it today, this weeks curriculum was all contained in the DVD version of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” She found the idea refreshing. It must be admitted though that she is an extremely inteligent and devoted disciple.
Yeti - Exactly. It is not only they who want a chance to enjoy other people. Recently I have been extremely lucky in that I have found some exceptionaly bright, creative, open minded, adventurous people with whom I engage in a sort of intellectual flirtation. I’ll show you my soul if you’ll show yours kind of thing. Makes it all worthwhile.
there’s a lot of theory out there. if you consider affective factors, then copious amounts of speaking and writing from the get go would perhaps not always be the best solution. some students take longer to produce, and the more they are pushed, the longer it takes. Some people also take longer to produce their L1. This is natural approach (krashen) and related to TPR as well. i’m not saying that there doesn’t need to be some pushing, especially in this an EFL situation. but pushing “non-authentic” language in such a way is often seen as very limiting in terms of actual learning. from what i’ve read, most theorists tend to favor speaking before writing.
as another poster mentioned, the learning should have something to do with the students, who can then see that it will be useful to them, and in turn they will be more motivated to learn/improve than they would be studying some textbook full of non-authentic material that doesn’t relate to them at all. motivation (intrinsic) is a key to real learning.
Common sense methods of teaching are the most effective ways. You can write several massive tomes on theory, but still it boils down to:
a) First, teach them some vocabulary or grammar rules.
b) Design some games or fun activities where they can play with the vocab/grammar they just learned.
Can you handle that? Then you will be a good teacher, and your kids will more than likely actually learn.
What you should not do, and I despise that they try to foist this crap on kids in Taiwan, is all this “sing song, clap hands” buffoonery. Learning “Row, Row Your Boat” isn’t going to teach kids a damn thing. Songs are the least effective way to get across vocabulary and grammar to students. I’ve tried teaching in kindergartens here but, sadly, that appears to be all they want the teacher to do - play hokey-pokey and sing Old McDonald.
[quote=“mod lang”]Common sense methods of teaching are the most effective ways. You can write several massive tomes on theory, but still it boils down to:
a) First, teach them some vocabulary or grammar rules.
b) Design some games or fun activities where they can play with the vocab/grammar they just learned.
Can you handle that? Then you will be a good teacher, and your kids will more than likely actually learn.
What you should not do, and I despise that they try to foist this crap on kids in Taiwan, is all this “sing song, clap hands” buffoonery. Learning “Row, Row Your Boat” isn’t going to teach kids a damn thing. Songs are the least effective way to get across vocabulary and grammar to students. I’ve tried teaching in kindergartens here but, sadly, that appears to be all they want the teacher to do - play hokey-pokey and sing Old McDonald.[/quote]
I don’t agree. Songs work very well with children. Granted, I don’t like the overly complex ones that are shoved down kids throats for the sake of appearance. But “row, row, row your boat” and others of the sort can be used with great success. Draw a couple pictures of a boat, a river and a happy dude. Then have the kids rowing the boat. I’ve recently started asking kids to tell me what they think songs we sing mean in Chinese. They are surprisingly close without any translation having been provided for them. They are learning from them. Also, more than vocab and grammar are learned from songs. Songs teach pronunciation, intonation and listening, among other skills. They are also a way of making English fun and creating a positive class environment. 100% understanding of every word is not necessary and, I’d argue, is not the point of children’s songs. I sure didn’t know what “life is but a dream” meant when I was six. Sure liked the song though.
Yes. I listen to about fifty times as much Mandarin as I speak. After I have heard something enough times I feel more confident about using it myself. Listening practice and vocabulary study are the primary means by which I learn Mandarin. An opportunity to talk is also essential but, for most people, the amount of listening should exceed the amount of talking by a factor of thirty at least IMHO. I think the main value of attemting to speak is that it forces you to recognize what you CAN’T say and it reinforces what you have learned through listening and reading. If Taiwanese could understand these things their English would improve dramaticaly because they would then set about constructing apporopriate listening environments for themselves. The worst thing about English in this country is that people think that they can learn to speak by reading and writing. Or to put it another way, Taiwanese have a listening problem. They don’t.