I've just begun teaching a group of 8-year olds at my hagwon in South Korea and came to realize that their English level is quite a bit lower than it should be (given that they've been learning it for 2 years now). On top of this, they are often unmotivated and don't do their homework most of the time. I want them to improve their basic language abilities before moving on to the more advanced material that they "should" be doing.
My boss has given me the green light to teach them the basics again, but I am unsure of how to go about doing this. I need to submit a lesson plan soon and am stuck on how to boost their speaking confidence as well as ability to form correct sentences.
Help! Do you have ideas/suggestions? Any advice is appreciated!
Need to re-teach English basics.... but how??
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tmannsfeldt
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Sally Olsen
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Gee, I wish I knew what basic English was and how it is learned from step to step. I have a student of that age who can't speak a word of English or understand anything I say and doesn't want to and one who is writing a play and asks me how to spell "intimidate". I know that sometimes you have a specific curriculum in school's like yours and the kids are marked for attending the lesson and learning the verb "to be" lesson 6. I guess you could take the lesson titles as benchmarks of their learning or the index of a good book. I often found though in my own learning this way that I didn't understand or remember the lesson the first time or second time around and yet they wouldn't let me go back because I had been ticked off on the card as having that lesson. The teacher would often say to me, but I taught you that last week. Even the shop keepers reported on me to my teacher and told her that I had done this or that wrong and I should have it right because they knew I was on lesson 12. I went to two different schools so I could repeat the same lessons in one week but of course still didn't get it always
With my basic beginner students, we have developed a Greenlandic picture dictionary with Greenlandic pictures and themes - family, transportation, my house, me. There are 10 to 12 words on a page with numbers so I can say, what is number 1? There are lines from the word to the picture. Underneath there are basic verbs so that they can make a sentence with the words. The first pictures is a girl with hair, nose, mouth, etc. pointed out and they have to make sentences describing her. The worst say, This is a nose. This is a mouth. She has an arm. The best say, This is my cousin, Ivalu, and she lives in Aasiaat and she loves handball. She gets her dark hair because she is Greenlandic and .... you get the idea. For homework, I take pictures of them and they have to write a story and build their own dictionary. They bring in pictures of their house, their family or borrow a cheap camera and take pictures. They end up having their own private picture dictionary. I take the best stories and put them up on the bulletin board. They have to use all the words in the story in some way but of course, can use more. It gives them a basic vocabulary of 1000 words which are in the back in alphabetical order with Greenlandic translation. You can then "test" these words and give stickers. I white out the words in one book and the kids test each other. You can have a certificate for ten, twenty, etc words. They can take it home to practice with parents and the parents can time them to see how fast they can say them, spell them, write sentences with them. You can have a chart they fill in at the back of the book. You can make cloze exercises or crosswords or word search games for each ten words. You can make go fish cards with individual pictures , "Do you have a nose?" NO, go fish! You can play Memory with the cards or match them or categorize them or alphabetize them. You can compare pictures of kids in different countries or houses in different countries. You can build a Spanish picture dicationry, a French picture dictionary and so on by finding pictures on google images. They can make up path games with the words on a path - go back two if your hair is brown. You can make bingo cards with the parts of the pictures. They can dream up monsters with the same characteristics or cartoon characters. They can make up the stories for the picture (that rarely happens here as they are so literal and that really is Ivalu from Aasiaat in the book). The Let's Go Picture Dictionary is great if you can't make your own and has tons of games and activities in the teacher's manual.
With my basic beginner students, we have developed a Greenlandic picture dictionary with Greenlandic pictures and themes - family, transportation, my house, me. There are 10 to 12 words on a page with numbers so I can say, what is number 1? There are lines from the word to the picture. Underneath there are basic verbs so that they can make a sentence with the words. The first pictures is a girl with hair, nose, mouth, etc. pointed out and they have to make sentences describing her. The worst say, This is a nose. This is a mouth. She has an arm. The best say, This is my cousin, Ivalu, and she lives in Aasiaat and she loves handball. She gets her dark hair because she is Greenlandic and .... you get the idea. For homework, I take pictures of them and they have to write a story and build their own dictionary. They bring in pictures of their house, their family or borrow a cheap camera and take pictures. They end up having their own private picture dictionary. I take the best stories and put them up on the bulletin board. They have to use all the words in the story in some way but of course, can use more. It gives them a basic vocabulary of 1000 words which are in the back in alphabetical order with Greenlandic translation. You can then "test" these words and give stickers. I white out the words in one book and the kids test each other. You can have a certificate for ten, twenty, etc words. They can take it home to practice with parents and the parents can time them to see how fast they can say them, spell them, write sentences with them. You can have a chart they fill in at the back of the book. You can make cloze exercises or crosswords or word search games for each ten words. You can make go fish cards with individual pictures , "Do you have a nose?" NO, go fish! You can play Memory with the cards or match them or categorize them or alphabetize them. You can compare pictures of kids in different countries or houses in different countries. You can build a Spanish picture dicationry, a French picture dictionary and so on by finding pictures on google images. They can make up path games with the words on a path - go back two if your hair is brown. You can make bingo cards with the parts of the pictures. They can dream up monsters with the same characteristics or cartoon characters. They can make up the stories for the picture (that rarely happens here as they are so literal and that really is Ivalu from Aasiaat in the book). The Let's Go Picture Dictionary is great if you can't make your own and has tons of games and activities in the teacher's manual.