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How to teach children the basics... | ||
Tags: Children | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Languages & Work |  | |
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4861 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 1 of 19 17 July 2012 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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...of the language during 2 weeks?
Currently I work on a local summer camp in my 'borntown' and I've decided to teach children some basics of Bulgarian. The group numbers about 24-25 children (but since the camp lasts only 8 hours daily, the number of children varies from day to day). Today I've started with some basic stuff about Bulgaria and some very basic words (learning the alphabet seemed to be too difficult idea). Tomorrow my friend, with whom I work, will prepare some cards with pictures of the words the children have learned today and we'll play charade with them. I'd like to hear your opinion - if you were me, how would you like to carry out these lessons? It's worthy to add that, unfortunately, there are some children who are completely disobedient and they spoil almost every action I try to take and there's too much noise around... Edited by prz_ on 17 July 2012 at 8:07pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 19 17 July 2012 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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You know, while some children are really inteligent and interested in learning quite
anything including a language from a young age, the rest are not. And, most children prefer to do something else than study during the summer. And the children present are changing, that is another fact against a structured "long-term" activity, be it a language or a game with several episodes. Therefore, I am afraid your efforts won't have larger effect. The more that it is Bulgarian for which I doubt any of the children (btw what age approximately?) have motivation. A different thing would be getting them to know the bulgarian culture. A few words may be a part of that but the majority would be different things. I believe such a program would have much larger effect and would be more fun for the children. There are surely many things you can get them excited about! Games including pieces of bulgarian history, they might like bulgarian music or folk stories, they might enjoy preparing a bulgarian meal with you... I'm sorry, I don't want to spoil your enthusiasm, I really admire everyone who spends time with children during the summer camps, doesn't matter whether in the town or somewhere in the nature. I just believe that what you decide is one thing and what the children want to do is another. They are not at school, there is no reason to make them do things they are not interested in, the only way is to make your passion, which you want to teach or rather introduce or present, exciting for them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 19 17 July 2012 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Yeah. Also, why Bulgarian? It's understandable that you can teach them more in a Slavic language, but as far as I understand Czech is closer to Polish and also maybe more prestigious than Bulgarian?
If anything, it might be more useful to do some sort of a crash course in English and teach them about languages in general: how to use a small vocabulary efficiently (and simplify your ideas if you don't know enough grammar), what sort of crazy things are there in different languages, that English and Polish are actually related, that it's not enough to learn just vocabulary and grammar... Give some motivational talks, dealing with your experience with languages, why you learn them and what benefits this gives you. For some more ideas, here's the list of language presentations and lectures at Moscow Language festival 2012. Also, introduce them to the various tools like anki and lyricstraining:) and perhaps rather than trying to teach them all at least something, find the ones that have some interest in languages/English specifically and help them expand their horizons? Edited by Serpent on 17 July 2012 at 11:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4703 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 19 18 July 2012 at 2:03am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I work with Children as a profession and my best adive would be to mix it up. They have exteremly short attention spans asking them to focus for more than ten minutes just leads to trouble especially in such a large group.
Things like Anki and lyrics-training are simply a no go zone. The easiest thing to do would be to teach them some vocabulary that they find amusing or that they find amusing. Think teaching them monkey while jumping round like a great ape ( getting them to do the same). Then there are songs such as "head, shoulders, knees and toes" Picture flashcards and charades are great, though with an unfmailiar language they will struggle to think of their own charades on occasional, however if you have already introduced an action to them like in the previous example then they will be better placed to play. There will always be nosie with children, you need to be loud and make your sef the centre of attention, the clown act works well. Behaviour wise the naughty ones will puch as far as they can go, you have to be on top of discipline with them right from the start or you will set a preceident and soon the more well behaved children will think it is ok to follow suit. 4 or 5 words at a time for me has been most effective whenever I have tried to teach more retention rates just plumet ( this is with groups of 7-15 children). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 19 18 July 2012 at 4:34am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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have you tried lyricstraining.com yourself? it's a game and any kid who likes English and has some favourite songs in it will love it. i'm also not suggesting using these while teaching but just informing kids about the options - at least the ones who are interested in language learning or in getting good marks at school. kids are often more tech-savvy than adults so i wouldn't worry about this aspect of it. Edited by Serpent on 18 July 2012 at 4:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4861 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 6 of 19 18 July 2012 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
First of all, I'd like to wholeheartedly thank you for your replies.
Yes, school brings almost exclusively negative associations amongst children (well, in my case too :P But for *slightly* different reason). And the things have been worsened by my supervisor - she sad to children "you'll have surprise because Mr. XY will TEACH you Bulgarian". Doesn't she know that the verb "to learn" is like a red rag to a bull?! :/
The problem is that I can't find many interesting things about Bulgaria. I don't think that folk music will hold their interest. More dances maybe, but I don't have moves like Jagger, so you know... ;) And there's no chance for preparing any meal, well, maybe I can show the idea to my supervisor to start it from September in daycare, but now - no chance. I could show them some pictures of beautiful cities such as Plovdiv, but here comes the problem that 1. We have only three computers 2. And we have no projector, thus any work with multimedia is problematic.
The thing is what do they want to do? Play computer games, watch cartoons, some of them play soccer maybe and that's all.
They already have some activities in schedule and not all of them like them, so... Well. It's not a computer&cartoon zone ;-)
I think it's harder and harder to infect them with any passion. I wish I wasn't right
The answer is extremely simple: it's the only language, except English (but taking into account the fact that English is currently a must I'm really afraid of teaching English; that's the reason I don't give private lessons of this language - very popular activity amongst students) in which I can feel comfortable enough to teach others
And know you've touched a raw nerve. It's really discriminative and unfair. Even my friends told me, when I told them I can teach them some Bulgarian, they said sth like "If it was Croatian/Czech [respeectively] then maybe...". The fact that some languages are more overally prestigious in society absolutely annoys me and even more then, well, I hope that Bulgarians here will forgive me, but in fact Bulgarian philology wasn't my choice - I wanted to study Croatian, but my rank from mature exam was too low... And even if I've started to like Bulgarian, some kind of Yugo-Nostalgia has stayed on... So it's also personally touchy subject for me.
To this point I have no objections...
...and here is another touchy subject. As for now, my multilingual learning is an experiment. I don't know if I'll succeed - maybe people who say that we should learn only 1 or 2 languages are right and I'll beautifully fail? Besides, I don't know, if it gives precious things in other's eyes. It doesn't give me job, money, respect... In fact, because of languages (but not only them) I have wider look for all the nations, but I'm afraid it makes me even more alienated, because I can't be fooled by words like 'faith', 'traditions', 'normal', 'abnormal' etc... While the rest (well, most of them) find these values still very important. So, as for now, I'm not ready for such conversations - I even try to avoid them while conversing with my friends (although it slightly changes). Maybe when (I hope it's a matter of 'when', not 'if') I'll be able to brag about more Bs and Cs instead of so many A1 and A2, I'll be glowing with pride - when I'll be like Cristina or Iversen ;) However, I'd like to mention that today I had a very nice spontaneous small talk with one girl, who's father knows English, Norwegian and basics of Arabic. However, she's not currently interested in languages. Nothing surprising, I've also treated them only as some subjects at school until my 'around the world music fascination' and it was quite recently when I've started learning them seriously.
Well, In my opinion it could have been a yes if we had better multimedia. But, unfortunately, as I've previously written...
Another little problem of mine - simply, I'm too shy to do such things. I try to be more open and I'm quite successful in this, but such pretending a fool is still one step too far for me. @Serpent - Maybe whole 2 weeks would be too much, but one day could be worth showing them lyricstraining and etc. P.S. Sometimes topics considering others become thoughts about yourself... Edited by prz_ on 18 July 2012 at 8:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 19 18 July 2012 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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You already speak better English than a lot of people learning it, though:)
And well, given that they're not the same kids all the time, best introduce this sort of thing several times. I know it's unfair but if they lack an interest, they won't learn anything. It will be a bigger motivation boost if they learn something they consider cool, rather than a relatively obscure language YOU like. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4861 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 8 of 19 18 July 2012 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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As I wrote, it's not even about liking, it's about feeling confident in Bulgarian ;)
1 person has voted this message useful |
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