Teaching Dialogue To 6 Year Old

[JSweatman]

Hi. I have recently started tutoring a 6 year old Chinese boy in English. His parents have asked that I focus on dialogues rather than reading or writing - basically they want him to be able to have converstations with English speaking people. He has a very good English vocabulary but he is not able to form sentences. He can speak in sentences, but they are sentences that he has memorized and he doesn't always understand the conversation he is participating in - he is not able to think in English. I do not speak Chinese, and he can not read Chinese or English. Since he can't read and I can't speak Chinese it is difficult to introduce new concepts to him in his native language. Vocabulary is fine as I can bring in pictures, and I have no problems teaching him pronunciation, but I don't have a clue how to teach him sentence structure and conversations in a way that he will understand!!! Please help!!!!!!!!

[Sally Olsen]

I would imagine that you have found some things that work already. The TPR method (look this up on the Internet) is very good with this age along with games and vocabulary. I think you might be panicking for no reason. What would you want to talk about with a six year old other than his interests which you must be able to see if you are in his home? Just set up a little routine as you learn - always repeat what you have learned in the last lessons in some form at the beginning and then add something new and practice it and then play a game incorporating all the things you have learned at the end. Write stories about his actions with illustrations so he can make little books to read. Can you take pictures of him doing his daily tasks, playing a game step by step, shopping, riding the bus or walking to school and so on. Then write an English story underneath and read these over at each lesson for awhile. You can make stories about your experiences too, how you get to his house, what you eat at a restaurant and so on. Sports might be an interesting topic or some type of comics, video or computer game. You could watch a cartoon together and have the sound off so that you can comment in English. Just commenting on what he is doing or what you are doing will give him an idea of making sentences in English. Since he will have a rudimentary idea of what language is in Chinese, these things will come with time and his knowledge of his own language.