The number one most important thing you need to know about teaching very young learners
My candidate is “A complete lack of interest the first time you do something is absolutely no predictor of how much they will like it the second, third and one millionth time”, but I’d love to hear other people’s suggestions.
July 5th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
How about ” The two most powerful warriors are patience and time”?
Leahn
July 5th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Nice!
Anyone else?
July 7th, 2010 at 11:23 am
Keep it simple and quick, don’t drag things out.
And
Kids like repetition – if they like a story, you can read it to them every day for a month and they’ll still love it.
July 9th, 2010 at 8:57 am
Kid’s like routines. They like to know what’s coming next or at least not be too surprised by it. Often, we have to break the routine more for our benefit than for the students.
Maybe more experienced teachers can correct me, but I’m pretty sure there is quite a low ceiling on what YL’s can achieve – at least in the standard 2 classes a week format. They can get really good with basic vocabulary and songs/drills simple games etc…but actually being able to construct grammatically correct sentences or communicate more than the simplest ideas….I’m doubtful they can ever do that without spending a lot more time in an English speaking environment.
I don’t mean to say we are wasting our time. 2 hours spent doing something fun in English with other kids in a positive and safe environment is time and money well spent. If not in our classes they’d just be vegetating in front of the TV….
July 9th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Hey Alex,
Working with kids is an interesting challenge. I just read an article that may speak to your situation: “The whole point of extensive reading — and how it achieves improvements in language proficiency — is that students read as much as possible, as often as possible, and with as much enjoyment as possible.” (http://oupeltglobalblog.com/2010/07/07/the-importance-of-extensive-reading-red-dog/)
Think of “As much as possible” “As often as possible” and “With as much enjoyment as possible” like the sliders on a sound mixer. If the sound mixer was how you were going to deliver your class, I would have the enjoyment slider pushed right up as far as it can go. The fun will spill over and make the the other two sliders easier to work with.
My humble opinion.