Job Discussion Forums

[zander7990]

hey guys.

i teach 4 kids english and am having trouble here. all the kids are around the same age. around 8 or 9. we go over the same thing over and over in class. but this one kid just doesnt get it. he is so far behind with the group that i cant do anything to get him up to date. and the school wont do anything either cause of his time schedule. today, i was teaching he/she has some ..... and they have some ..... we went over it for 15 min and its very repetitive. he got it for some time and things were going well. we change pictures and then everyone else still got it but now its already left him. i dont want it to seem like im picking on him. any ideas??

[womblingfree]

That sounds like me in my French classes when I was a child.

In the end the teacher gave up and made us read Asterix books in English and eat cheese.

I prupose video's or simple books he can interact with featuring basic English. Does he have any English ability or is he disinterested in everything?

Colourful pictures, games, basic words, flash cards, songs. If all else fails word search with pictures!

[abufletcher]

I might be it's just not this particular learners "time" to learn this particular grammar item. Does he not get the concept of subject-verb agreement at all, which is possible since it doesn't exist in Japanese? Or is it a specific problem with has/have?

You might try making the idea more visual by using color coded cards, for example, with he / she in blue and has in blue then they in red and have in red. Then play some sort of matching game.

[zander7990]

i cant tell wat the problem is. i get him to repeat it so many times that its drilled into him and stays with him for at least 10 mins or so. then we switch pages to another group of pics, and its all gone. the other students still remember it and have no problem, but for this guy, its disappeared like it was never there.

[angrysoba]

I think that you shouldn't see this as too serious a problem. It may be that your student doesn't respond well to certain activities. They may be able to repeat back what they have learnt in drills and still failed to see the 'rule'.

Alot of people studying Japanese have trouble knowing when to use 'wa' and 'ga' but can otherwise speak in Japanese well. Your student will probably continue making mistakes with subject-verb agreement for a long time as most Japanese students do. You just have to use various error-correction techniques (finger-correction or as Abu suggested colour cards) that act as prompts but don't put your student on the spot.

No two learners progress at the same pace.

[abufletcher]

I'll mention that I've had a few what I would call "complete non-learners" here in Japan. These are people who seem almost entirely incapable of formally learning/remembering anything in a school setting. I had never experienced this before coming to Japan.

Example: A university class in Second Language Teaching. One of the teaching points was an English definition of "syllabus" given as "An ordered list of things that you plan to teach." We spent over 30 minutes talking about each part of this definition and having the students repeat it. The students were informed that it would be on the following week's quiz AND EVERY QUIZ THEREAFTER. Furthermore, they students were told that this was a "must learn" item and that they would not be allowed to pass the course unless they could provide this definition on the final exam (along with a small number of other "must-learn" items).

Each week for 7 weeks we ran though a brief "review quiz" at the beginning of each week's lesson. Each week this one student failed to be able to provide this definition. Each week I laboriously made sure that this student wrote down the definition on the quiz paper (which they took home). And, of course, after nearly two months of repeated review of this simple English sentence, this student was unable to provide this definition (or any part of it) on the final exam. In fact she only managed to write 4 answers total on an otherwise entirely blank 6 page exam.

This was not one of those stubborn "I hate English" types so common in university classes. I can teach them. I can somehow teach anyone with an ounce of passion, even if it is rampant hatred for English and foreigners in general. But this girl just silently sat through class after class after class, never missing a single day. I would say she has a massive learning disability. But somehow or another she managed to make her way through the Japanese school system and her other professors insist that "Well, yes she had problems but she is making some small progress." Maybe, I've had her in three classes so far and each time I try to give her all the individualized help I can but it's like teaching a slug. I've had long private sessions with her where I try to help her understand how much more effort is required of her. Another example: She also took my Teaching Foreign Language to Children course (required for graduation) in which each student had to find a child aged 5-10 to tutor (once a week for 10 weeks). Students had to prepare materials and keep a journal of their experiences. At the end of the semester most of the students, even the so-called "losers" has journals at least 15-20 pages long. But this student's journal was three pages long and one of the pages was just a list of English color words written over and over again.

Now if this were just an isolated incident I wouldn't even be mentioning it here but I find it to be a regular occurrence at my university. Somehow, somewhere along the way, these people just got mentally switched off. They are able to somehow function at some minimal level within Japanese society. This girl apparently does have a part-time job.

The point I'm making here to the OP is this: Don't assume that this is entirely YOUR fault. Have a close look at how this child interacts (verbally and physically) with the other kids in the room. It may be far more than just a language learning problem. One "symptom" which generally seems to tie all of these learning disabled students together, in my admittedly limited experience with such things, is an extreme physical stillness.

Since this sort of stillness is also generally characteristic (to a lesser extent) to Japanese students in general, this may be one thing that has allowed these people to slip through the system largely unnoticed.

If I had to do some sort of "educational intervention" with a child like this, I would start by working with basic, non-threatening, physical exchange activities, maybe something like hot-potato. That is, I would try to jump start their body before I tried to work with language.

[zander7990]

well, ive tried to make it easier for him too. ive gotten all the students to answer the same question and then ask him as well and he still doesnt get the answer right. he looks like he is listening but i dont really know. he talks to his other student friend and all, but hes not learning. i feel i cant spend too much time on him cause then all the other students get bored or fall behind and i know they want to learn and keep going forward. wat else can i do??

[Captain Onigiri]

The kid may have completely checked out for English. Kind of like when you read a really boring book and realise your eyes have been going back and forth for a couple of paragraphs but you acutally haven't "read" anything. You might try to find out if he is passionate about anything, like baseball or sumo or video-games and see if you can incorporate that into your lessons.
The newest, biggest thing at least in US educational theory is Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. It says we all learn in different ways. Some of us learn best by reading something. Others by hearing it and so on. Mozart had musical intelligence, Frank Loyd Wright had spatial intelligence, etc. You might experiment in teaching him the material in several different ways and see if he responds better to one of them. You can get a lot more info by googling him.
The kid might have an old-fashioned learning disability. Is it possible to inquire with the administration if the student has a learning disability that you need to be aware of?