Advice on Teaching English to Japaneseby Chris Weber
greatp...@gmail.com
it to remind you)
2. Give students more time to formulate a response. This includes all
levels of students. Don't worry about there being an un-naturally long
silence between you asking a question and getting a response. Just
because they don't respond right away doesn't mean they haven't
understaood the question, it's often because they are mentally
rehearsing their answer in their head to self-correct any grammar
mistakes (according to their current conception of English grammar).
You'll get better at reading (from body language etc) when it's a case
of not understanding and when it's the situation I've just mentioned,
but in the meantime it's better to leave that extra space for the
student to answer.
3. "...Make use of wrong answers to elicit the correct answer when the
kids are sitting sliently not guessing at the answer to your question.
Rather than giving them the right answer it's much better to make them
say it. For example, if you ask "What is it?" (holding up a "dog" card)
and for some reason nobody has answered you should ask them "Is it a
hippopotamus?" or alien or something else (sometimes something funny or
crazy is best) and usually that gets them joining in right away and you
don't have to prompt them after that. On the other hand if you tell
them "It's a dog" then they are less likely to join in with as much
enthusiasm on the following questions.
4. When you assign homework for the youngsters make sure they know what
to do. This might involve explaining the first question on the page,
but before you explain it you should try and get them to tell you what
it is. Then for the next question you try and get them to tell you only
giving them the minimum amount of help and gradually they should be
able to explain it to you without any more cues. Cos you're not gonna
be there when they do the homework, if they haven't been able to
demonstrate that they can do the qeustion verbally, then there is a
high chance that they won't do it at home. Following on from this,
sometimes when kids haven't done homework it's for this very reason, so
if they tell me they didn't do their homework, I ask in a friendly way
to see their homebook. I make sure they realise (by my smiling and
tone) that I'm not angry at them, but I just wanna see their book. I
don't use any Japanese at all, but they understand. Then, I get them to
tell me the answers to the questions that they should have done for
homework. Then you'll know if they need more explanation from you or
whatever."
Chris Weber, Former English Teacher for Kevin`s English Schools
http://www.eikaiwa1.com