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Submitted by Arual on 13 October, 2008 - 18:40.

I am a teacher of English as a second language in Spain, in a small village. My students are from 7 to 12 years and all of them are in the same class. It is difficult to teach English in this classroom with different text books and also I do not like them. I would like to teach English in a different way. I want that my students learn about English speaking countries. From the country they will learn about food, clothes, family, traditions, all the topics that the curriculum has. I need help with this because I do not know how to start or if anybody can help me with the situation that i have I would appreciate a lot.

Thanks!

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vladka

Hi, i think that it is

Submitted on 16 October, 2008 - 07:14

Hi,

i think that it is rather difficult situation. I don't know if you have a chance to change a coursebook or not. But anyway, you can expand your textbook. It is, of course, more demanding but if your studetns appreciate it you will see the results. I have similar classes and have to use one book for them as well. Try to divide the class into smaller groups working together and adapt the activities to their level. Our teacher on methodology told us once that we shouldn't simplify the text (activity) but instructions. Thus, they can work on the same activity but each group will work on something bit different. For example, one group may look for and analyse sentence structure and the other (weaker) may analyse verb forms. I wish you luck :)

SteveMan

Hi there, Yes, I do agree

Submitted on 25 October, 2008 - 09:56

Hi there, Yes, I do agree with you, less is sometimes more. I have been teaching English language at secondary school for about four years now and I haven’t had any experience teaching at primary school, but there is one thing I’d like to point out regarding my pupils who have just finished primary school and are in their first year at secondary school. Why is it that most of them feel it unnatural even to say a few words in English? It seems to me as if their mouth and tongue was not used to the sounds they are supposed to create and therefore they are loosing confidence and stop speaking as soon as I correct them. The interesting thing is that they do know how to write the words down and they even remember the parts of grammar they’ve been thought e.g. putting the nouns into plural, but as soon as I want them to say some words and some of them should be in plural, they tend to kind of forget about the grammar. It looks as if they knew everything but they don’t. I think what they’ve got is a lot of information on different types of grammar but that’s it, nothing more or less. Why don’t they have more fun with English at primary school rather then learning the grammar and the rules? I would rather prefer having students confident and enjoying English even with grammatical mistakes which would be up to me to fix and teach them more ways of expressing themselves. There’s room for listening and singing a couple of songs during primary studies. By the way, who is your teacher on methodology? I have got the same recommendation from my teacher on methodology? J “Don’t change the activity but the instructions”