When teaching English, I remember my own learning trick in 4 other languages (a hobby). The best advice is to train the ear to listen to sentences or whole phrases, and not get stuck on words. The ear doesn't evaluate every word in speaking, but "parcels" of information. So one asks oneself did I understand what the speaker was saying? in broad terms. then it is time to refine, check words etc. I once had to give a "thank you" speech for my birthday, in German, so I did the best I coould, but knew there were many errors. The message got across and everyone both laughed and clapped. I was anxious, but it didn't matter, as the situation wasn't "crucial".
A final trick I learned was to become "clever" in saying something another way if I knew I didn't have the words or skill to say EXACTLY what I intended.
Perhaps these ideas may find some use with other English teachers.
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I try to encourage my weak 6th grade pupils to understand sentences rather than individual words, but I still find them translating word-for-word, which usually results in misunderstood sentences. Any ideas on how to teach this skill?
Perhaps you could have them listen and repeat sentences they are familiar without having them read, of course.
Hi,
It seems that your students lack confidence, so for a start you could try to rebuild it. For example you could choose a short film and play it for them. Then talk about the film , so they can see how much they actually understood although they were unfamiliar with many words in the film.
You could also give them a text with missing words and prove that understanding every single word is not neccessary in order to understand a text.
You could do a similar thing with a song; base your lesson on a song with missing words and only at the end reveal the missing words.
Hope it helps...
Agnieszka
Translation is inevitable at certain stages of language learning, so I use it to replicate sentence structure if possible-this works with French and English as sentence structure is identical, and to increase students' awareness of time (past, present or future); NOT to be confused with Tenses. Students should make simple standard sentences in their native language, avoiding slang or idiomatic expressions. It helps.
Thank you I totally agree. You see I have this student who's about to be relocated to the US and I finally managed to help him understand how important incorporating chunks is. He was obssessed with understanding every single word in every single video/podcast we listened to.
As Michael Lewis pointed out in his "lexical approach" There is a distinction between vocabulary, traditionally thought to be costituted of single items, and lexis, which includes not only the single words but also the word combinations that we store in our mental lexicons. Native speakers have a vast stock of these lexical prefabricated items or chunks and are vital for fluent production.
There's an article that's really worth exploring: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/lexical-approach-1-what-does-lexical-approach-look
Many thanks again,
www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/georginahudson