Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Huayu Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Jining Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
Learning a new language can undoubtedly be difficult. It’s a language created by people of another mindset, so no surprise we can find words or tenses not existing in our native language. But I want to talk about a difficulty that lies deeper than confusing Past Simple and Present Perfect. It is when a student can’t recognise the language as a tool to express his ideas. He can’t see that different words are like pieces of puzzle, they can be combined with some other words, but can’t fit another group of words. And using them, connecting them, we are painting a picture of what we are trying to say, what actually happened. When a student has this understanding - what is a noun, why we need preposition «at» after «look» but don’t need any prepositions after «watch» - it is good, all the differences between tenses can be explained. But when a student can’t grasp the idea that a word is a piece of information and can be connected with other words in a certain way - it becomes much more difficult. Even though such a student can have quite a wide vocabulary he treats it like an inept junglier, especially with abstract words. It is like he is resistant to acquire it, too afraid of showing bad English to allow himself to experiment with the language, keeps it distant and can’t absorb it properly. To tell the truth I haven’t figured out how to work more effectively with such students, but we have time when students talk, using all of their vocabulary, and they cope pretty well with the task to deliver their message. But then we are trying to take it slow and pay attention to particular words. I also noticed that teaching parts of the speech doesn’t bring good results, because words like «noun», «verb» doesn’t mean much to them even in their first language. So I ask: is it an object? or an action? or it is an attribute to some object? Then we go to how we can use it, making simple collocations. Nobody likes being treated like a child, so we go through this stage fast and he has a chance for creativity at the stage of making examples with this word. For example, «ability». It’s an «object» - an attribute of somebody’s personality. So, we can «have an ability». We can «lose an ability». We can «gain an ability». That is what we can do with it. And then we talk about attributes of «ability»: «good ability», «remarkable ability», and so on. It is also important to build an association between the word and its meaning, create an image that pops up in your head when you hear «ability». It’s an abstract word, so realia can’t be used. But different pictures, matching exercises with pictures, miming activities and role-plays are of extreme use. It gives the opportunity to look at the word from all the angles, to taste it, to memorise it, to imprint it. It brings some results, but they are not so big in comparison with the result of those who are willing to experiment with the language and memorise the correct usage of the words quicker. So I think the core of this is partly in an individual student’s type of perception and partly in motivation to deeply know the language, not to use random words just for show, but to truly accept it. Working on the student’s personal motivation and taking some parts of the lessons slow (when we study new words or practise grammar) despite the student’s age and level are my answers to this question.
