I am an English teacher in China, and I have been a private tutor of a 10 years old boy who is in grade 4 of a primary school, I encountered great difficulty in teaching him.
In his text book, there are two dialogues of 12-13 sentences in each lesson, most of the sentences are very short except for 2-3 long ones containing new words, he is required as homework to recite one of the dialogues each week, but he has great difficulty in reciting, sometimes 2-3 long sentences would take him more than half an hour to recite,sometimes he just utterance some "non-language" sounds just like Joey learning French in <<Friends>>, and make it both funny and annoying, but I know he is not doing it on purpose. What I worries most is he is losing his interest in learning English, I tried many ways, just like write each word in a sentence on small cards, mix them and made him to rearrange the sentence, or I make up a game which containing the new sentences, but they don't work very well. Also, he has difficulty in recognizing words, some high frequency words just like "sport", "family" ..are always new to him, I wonder how many times I should teach him before he could remember a word.
He is very clever boy whose math scores are very high, I hope I can help him, I know as his lessons going deeper, his difficulty will become more serious. I hope I can learn from those experienced teachers who has experts tips on teaching
primary foreign language students.
Thanks a lot.
How can I help him to recite?
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I suggest you to try using other medias as your teaching tools, other than confined yourself and the boy to the use of conventional text books. Try to find English cartoons in the form of vcd or dvd that you can watch together with him. You may also try to use music. From my personal experience, songs with simple lyrics, or even nursery rhymes, are never known to fail to attract children's interests. I used to teach a whole class of 10 and 11 year olds who could not even read well, but were able to memorize one whole page of song lyrics because they like the song so much.
maybe give this a try
I haven't taught a lot in ESL, but I have had two students who were reciting things. I think on those long sentences, give the student the feeling of achievement and progress at the same time. Maybe start with the first two or three words, and then add just one word. Keep doing this adding one word until the sentence is finished.
The first part of the sentence is constantly being reviewed and solidified, while the goal of adding one new word doesn't give a sense of being too unbearable. After those hard sentences, try the same method from the beginning of the dialogue, sentence by sentence. If you like it better, start from the end and work to the beginning.
Being a music student and teacher, I've had to memorize music and help others memorize (memorization is a technique that is generally lambasted by the rest of the educational profession). I've used similar methods in music and they seem to work well, since reviewing and progressing is happening at the same time. Though it may be a lttle time consuming, at least it may allay some frustration, if the child has to memorize it.
The first part of the sentence is constantly being reviewed and solidified, while the goal of adding one new word doesn't give a sense of being too unbearable. After those hard sentences, try the same method from the beginning of the dialogue, sentence by sentence. If you like it better, start from the end and work to the beginning.
Being a music student and teacher, I've had to memorize music and help others memorize (memorization is a technique that is generally lambasted by the rest of the educational profession). I've used similar methods in music and they seem to work well, since reviewing and progressing is happening at the same time. Though it may be a lttle time consuming, at least it may allay some frustration, if the child has to memorize it.
Last edited by jotham on Sun Dec 03, 2006 1:36 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Senorita Daniels
- Posts: 202
- Joined: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:11 pm
Oh, that poor student! His homework is going to make him hate English, and that's really a shame. I think that homework assignment is a really bad match for his needs. If there's any way you can communicate with his teacher and ask for the assignment to be changed or eliminated, please do so.
In the meantime, you still have to help him do the assignment, though, right?
I'm a speech-language pathologist. It's a fact that some people just do not have a great verbal memory. People like that may never be able to memorize a long dialogue. But sometimes, if you add non-verbal memory hooks to the process it will help. For instance, sometimes adding movement and/or hand gestures in appropriate ways will help (e.g., walking up to conversation partner and waving animatedly when the dialogue says, "how are you?"). Also, it often helps to add a rhythm or a melody to the dialogues, so they become either like chants or like songs. When reciting in class the child would have to minimize the singing aspect of course, but when memorizing at home it often helps.
Good luck!
-EH
In the meantime, you still have to help him do the assignment, though, right?
I'm a speech-language pathologist. It's a fact that some people just do not have a great verbal memory. People like that may never be able to memorize a long dialogue. But sometimes, if you add non-verbal memory hooks to the process it will help. For instance, sometimes adding movement and/or hand gestures in appropriate ways will help (e.g., walking up to conversation partner and waving animatedly when the dialogue says, "how are you?"). Also, it often helps to add a rhythm or a melody to the dialogues, so they become either like chants or like songs. When reciting in class the child would have to minimize the singing aspect of course, but when memorizing at home it often helps.
Good luck!
-EH
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Sally Olsen
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- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
How about taping the dialogues for him and letting him listen in bed at night as he falls asleep. You will need to get someone to help you be the other person in the dialogue. Explain the "little play" in his own language first so he knows what they are talking about. Then act it out as suggested above, with pictures if possible to make a story and have him read the story picture by picture making up what he thinks the dialogue will be in his own language and then in English. You can take the pictures with him as the other participant and make up his own little books that he can review at the beginning of your lessons. Some people say that it takes at least 7 times of using a word before it becomes yours - that doesn't mean saying it seven times in one session but seven times of actually using it in a meaningful situation. These dialogues in the books are not usually unreasonable so you should be able to make a story out of them. Try to relate them to as much mathematics as you can if he is good in math. But I too have found that people who are great at math are often not great at languages. It is a different side of the brain, isn't it? If you can show him that there are math symbols and language symbols and that you can add things in language and take them away, perhaps it will make things clearer to him. If you can show him patterns in language that might help too - he will be use to patterns in math.