Teach English in Dadonggou Zhen - Jincheng Shi

As an American mother of two girls, having raised them in Europe, I had to ensure they learned English, because we were living in France. As they have an Italian Father and we were often visiting relatives in Italy, I had to ascertain they felt comfortable with English, as if it was their native language. Fortunately, we travelled, yearly either to the UK or America, where they were exposed to the culture and accent. But, I feel that my efforts to read to them continually, with children’s English books and having them sing along to USA songs, and watch USA videos enabled them to feel extremely comfortable with English. One daughter was not a big reader, but luckily a friend in California, told me of the Twilight series and all the young female teens reading it. It was a modern day vampire Romeo and Juliet Shakespearean plot. This series of books helped immensely. I also found the series, The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe was written in a more classical manner giving them a more correct mode of speech. They realised that each book series were different in grammatical styles and cultural writing styles. I felt it important that they could differ from British English and American English. In addition, the Harry Potter Series added to their growing knowledge of English, and further stimulated them to be more proficient and comfortably switch between the languages they knew. The younger daughter, however, had an excellent English literature teacher through middle and high school in the French educational system. I enjoyed following her curriculum, because her teacher stimulated them to reflect and critique the reading material they had been assigned. My passion for reading also infected them. I love historical stories, and because of the books I read and discussed with them, I brought them to visit areas (i.e. Carcassone and the Cathars, Verona and Montecchio where both Romeo and Juliet residences are found; Venice, where Othello, “the Moor”, by Shakespeare opened discussion over culture and interracial marriage). At the moment, I am teaching conversational English to Italian adults. I decided to use an example of a book club. We chose together, The Little Prince and The Animal Farm. Both books differ in style and difficulty, therefore the students were exposed to vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation. The Italians were very content to try this mode of learning. They looked forward to our classes more-so than their previous teacher, because they were gaining confidence by hearing themselves and realising how much more they understood. I have been asked to continue, but would like to bring in other ideas. Due to the fact that in the future, I may have different levels and ages to teach. Therefore, from my experience, as well as my perspective, reading is a “receptive skill” (unit 7), for language acquisition. Both the Italians and my daughters realised their reading was both done with a purpose for learning a particular information and/or for attaining pleasure. All materials published are adaptable for learning. As with my daughters (my beginners), I used both authentic and non-authentic material. It can be a 360 degree tool to stimulate their fluency Simple vocabulary and grammar is taught by bringing in comics or children’s picture books, because one uses sight to stimulate “apprendimento”. Games that have instructions for playing (i.e. Monopoly, Miming) also stimulate vocabulary and thus, stimulate conversations. I used to sing them the alphabet, this helped them remember and hear the pronunciation (in my case American). Singing different styles of songs, country, funk, or rock, helped (I explained to them songs are also a form of poetry, google the words). The usual exercises mentioned i.e. jumbled texts, jigsaw reading, aid to further allow a better comprehension for grammar (always start off simple). From my first teaching experience, I realised that my students were gaining more confidence while reading out loud, fluency became easier. I began to gauge who had difficulties and who did not. Even if there wasn’t the clearest of understanding, I created a discussion of what was read (i.e. characters, themes). In addition, I prepared words that could be identified, discussed for their meaning or for their pronunciation. Questions were introduced to expose students to texts that could give them confidence skills and to stimulate a deeper understanding of author’s meaning. Additionally, I mentioned for them to read articles, books journals etc. so they could be exposed to different writing styles: from technical, to proper diction, as well as slang (i.e. poetry), that is part of the culture. Furthermore, I recalled that my fifth grade teacher, created a book reading competition. We chose from books listed and wrote a short summary. This competition stimulated me to read more and thus, exposed me toward appreciating reading at higher levels (by the time I was in high school, the testing system placed me at college level). As mentioned, a book club can be formed between groups and later discussed in separate presentations. Films (in original version) can be used, as a follow-up to a book read. In addition, theatrical stories can be chosen (i.e. in 6th grade we enacted, The Prince and the Pauper, by Mark Twain) thus, role playing and memorisation are used; all these different types of reading materials definitely stimulate language development. We as students, performed as actors, using our voices to show emotions (i.e. happiness, fear, anger). This created an awareness that through reading plays one portrays history of that period, and the writers have different use of language and style which have evolved through time. In the past, written English was more formal. Today’s literary writing can be extremely informal as well as, embody social injustices (i.e. Push, the Story of Precious Jones is written in first person narrative). Movies and Concerts are all techniques to assist the stimulation for languages, as well as expose you to cultural and social norms of that time period. One enjoyable example where reading was a follow-up for language acquisition, was when the organisation that hired me to teach, had “Bohemian Rhapsody” projected in English, at the theatre. Afterwards, my students wanted to read the lyrics to Queen’s songs.