Job Discussion Forums

[naturegirl321]

I ran across this site and was wondering how his method was perceived by other teachers in Japan. It seems a lot like what I used to teach in China and Korea. Remminds me a bit of Liu Yuan's Crazy English. It seems popular enough, his schedule is full, he's got things in Sweden and India, so it seems like people are willinng nto pay for him to go and teach them his method.

But does it work? What do people think of it?

I'm looking at starting a smmall kindergarten, here in Peru and am looking at possible methods, curriculums. Thanks for any insight you could give.

[Quibby84]

Japanese people are IN LOVE with Genki English. I dont really care for it..the graphics are kind of lacking. If you are planning on buying cards for kids you should consider Let's Go, Let's Begin for little ones, if you buy the set you can get a whole load of cards (that go with the book). At my first school they had a few Let's Go books lying around, and I thought they sucked. But at my new school they buy all the materials and it is actually a good book (if you use the flashcards 90% of the time and the book 10%.
Good luck!

[G Cthulhu]

[naturegirl321]

That's what I thought. I guess it's typical of somme places. LIke I said, remminds me of Crazy English. The thing I don't get is how popular he's gotten!

[ripslyme]

[alexcase]

There's some useful stuff on the site, e.g. game ideas and classroom language in Japanese and English and other stuff to help ALTs explain themselves. Not sure there is anything on there I would pay for though- I agree that the Let's Go songs are generally better than the Genki English ones, and ditto for some of the recent KG courses like Cookie and Friends. He also seems to be better for Elementary school stuff than for JHS or KG. Still, don't know any better site for an Elementary school ALT to go than Genki English.

TEFLtastic blog- www.tefl.net/alexcase

[flyer]

one of his main principles (as I understand it) is instead of teaching the kids songs like Mary had a little lamb and Jack and Jill etc where words like "fetch a pail of water" and "fleece", "sure to go" etc
these are not expressions that non natives kids need to learn, some are very old English.
Genki English makes songs using useful vocab only, for a young kid in a non English speaking country to pick up and use. The songs are made to be memorable and simple

I applude this idea, approach (At least for kids)

As far as other teaching methods, I also don't think there is a single method? as I understand it he gives advice but it all pretty flexible
and Genki English is hardly unique in trying to make kids happy and lively?

I use some of Genki English stuff, its good over all (IMO)

[tanuki]

Yeah, ripslyme & Alex have hit it on the head.

More or less end of discussion on that account IMO.

I will add just briefly that it's not awful. Could be worse. But I see no evidence of any methodology (unless you count yelling like crazy-things and running about a methodology). Most of the songs are... how shall I say... less than good. But flyer, too, is 100% on the money with the point about the vocab input from the songs.

I think the Genki stuff was a good starting point for a couple of fellas from Ehime-ken with no teacher training behind them, and ripslyme's "eat it up like candy"comments is SO true (and consequently piss-funny).

If it were overhauled an some actual pedagogical input were considered, then it has the possibility of not being so bad. But why the heck would you do that when people are paying you a bomb to do things just the way they are? ("If it ain't broke...", right?)

Some of the games contributed by OTHER people rock. Check those out.

But if I were starting a business, I wouldn't actually be looking to use the Genki materials as any sort of curriculum or syllabus document (an example of which is actually offered on the site, from memory).

Unfortunately, NatureGirl, I can't recommend you any young learner resources because I just make my own (and I put together my own syllabus when I came here). And I'm mostly an adult EFL teacher.

Maybe someone else on this thread can suggest some more resources worth checking out...

Best of luck with it!

Tanuki

------------------------------------------------------

http://www.eflteachertraining.com
If you take this gig seriously...

[G Cthulhu]

[tanuki]

Heya, G Cthulhu!

You make a good point here. Actually, you make two!

The first is that the actual vocab is not overly relevant. (I don't agree entirely with this, and I'll come back to why, but I see the point you're making).

The second is about the shoe-horning. Agreed.


So... what's my beef with the vocab issue?

You're right that kids are unlikely to learn masses of vocab just from singing songs. Like any language learning, the lexical items have to be connected to something meaningful (to the learner).

Kids don't just "absorb" vocab in L1 by listening to "Twinkle twinkle little star" for example. It's through the pre-school teacher showing a picture of a star, say, and saying "star" many, many, many times while holding the cardboard star that the kids make the connection. It might take more than that depending on the age of the kids and whether they actually understand something as external and abstract as a star.

Now, let's take the "twinkle" bit... my pre-school teachers probably did little "twinkly" movements with their hands at the same time as singing. And at some point in my psychological development I was able to relate that to my observations of the world, i.e. those bright-ish things in the night sky do tend to have a weird kind of look to 'em; they seem to be there one moment and not the next and then back again.

I may not have been able to make this connection at pre-school, but at some point I made the connection between that concept and the word "twinkle". That's how I knew (most likely) even by the age of 5 that say, a "light" doesn't "twinkle", it "shines".

SO...

If you're teaching young kids, why not keep the vocab simple, use flashcards and actions/gestures and TPR-style movement to help kids connect the otherwise meaningless string of sounds with something that they understand?

Just off the top of my head... if we take the "Twinkle, twinkle..." melody and did something like this:

"Doggy, doggy, woof, woof woof,
Kitty, Kitty, meow, meow, meow

woof, woof, woof, woof // meow meow meow
woof, woof, meow // woof woof meow

Doggy, doggy, woof, woof, woof
run and jump and run and jump..."

A somewhat silly example, I know, and completely made up on the spot, but I can see my 1-graders having a great time with this--where half the class can do the "woof" and the other half can do the "meow"-reply.

We could also do a thing where they actually run and jump (the dog after the cat -- or to spice it up and get them giggling, the cat after the dog!). That is they run when it says "run" and jump when it says "jump".

They learn "cat, dog, doggie, kitty, run and jump, plus the two sounds English speakers generally associate with cats and dogs (in contrast to "wang wang" and "nyeow, nyeow" in Japanese as you no doubt know).

All these lexical items can all be introduced in a really easy way that connects the more or less random sound in L2 with something they already understand and can say in L1.

Then it's just a matter of singing this type of song, where you "borrow" a melody--for a song the kids often sing in their native language ("piggybacking your song" as it's known) -- OR, like the Genki dudes and a host of others, you just make up your own songs using this simple kind of language.

I'm therefore with flyer, but I also agree that shoe-horning vocab or trying to focus on a large number of items is not so likely to work at lower levels.

As the kids get to higher levels, you can start expanding it. Take for, example, the song "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly..." I'm not suggesting we teach this long and complicated structures to EFL/ESL kids; but I'm willing to bet that primary school teachers use it to reinforce the vocab for the long list of animals (for L1 kids!).

Sidenote: You ever see The Muppets' version? I love it!

So at higher levels... or once they're used to the first "verse", you could introduce more vocab.

To extend our "Twinkle... " example, we might introduce "cow" and "moo" or "sheep" and "bahhhh" or whatever... I'm sure you see what I'm getting at.

That's why I think your point that the vocab being not so relevant is perhaps tossing out the baby with the bathwater.

Tanuki

----------------------------------------
http://www.eflteachertraining.com
If you're serious about this gig...

[flyer]