TeachingEnglish
Language barrier
Submitted by UAEteacher on 24 September, 2009 - 18:14
Hello,
I teach English to non-native Arab kids aged 6-8, and my students can barely recognize the letters of English and I spend a lot of time teaching them a few words which they often forget by the weekend. Still, my English supervisor, who is a native speaker, tells me to ecourage them to write a two-page story after attending one of my classes.
Now do you really think that I should do that? I mean I am in the middle of achieving this goal, demolishing the language barrier, while she is asking me to give them this task! I wonder what your opinion is.
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Getting to understand the English Language in terms of spoken english and writing are entirely two different things. Since the age group of students is between 6-8 years you need to be very patient with them. They will inevitably require lot of hand holding. Writing at this point of time can at best be used to test their understanding of what they have learnt till now. You need to start from the basics as in capital and small letters, vowels, consonants, short vowel and long vowel words. Simultaneously you could also play recorded stories which are interesting and use that as a tool to gradually raise their level.
Patience is the key.
If your supervisor is adamant that the class should start writing stories, perhaps you could do this as a whole-group activity in class. If you've just taught a few new words, perhaps from a lexical set, then you could get the children to think of ways that these words could occur together. This, of course, will be easiest if the words are nouns and verbs, especially with children, I guess. Then you could get them to suggest actions etc and write them on the board in the form of a short story. Next time you learn new vocabulary, for example adjectives, you could add them into the story and so it would get longer and longer. Perhaps the children would remember the words better, too, if they've used them in the context of the story. Once they've seen how writing a story can work, then you might move on to getting them to write on in groups without you direct support, and slowly move on to writing their on. However, I must say, writing a two-page story seems like a pretty hard task. I wonder how good the children would even be writing a story in Arabic!?
CMF