No More English Robots!

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

I don’t understand why people think they have to make learning so BORING!!! I just sat in on Mailynn’s English class, and I felt bad for the poor caremother’s trying to learn English—if I had to sit through a class that was taught in a different language and the only activities we did were out of a textbook, I would have quit on the second day. I didn’t learn how to speak English out of a textbook, did you? I didn’t know what a preposition was until after I was using it in sentences. No one really learns a language out of a textbook. And if they do, they probably sound robotic and speak slowly. When I take over, we’re going to have fun with English (hm…I must be my mother’s daughter).

I have access to a small library upstairs and I already ransacked it for picture books and juvenile literature that will motivate beginning English speakers. I think the more they read, the faster they’ll learn the language. We’ll play tons of games, we’ll come up with stories and act them out for each other, we’ll write poetry, we’ll talk about our lives, and we’ll sing songs, but we will NOT simply use a white board and a text book. Blah.

I taught some of the kids how to play "London Bridges" on Monday. They thought it was great fun to just wait right under my arms for the line "My fair Lady!" Sometimes I would catch a group of three of them at once--It's funny how some things don't change even when you travel to the other side of the planet.

These are pictures of us playing "Duck Duck Goose."

It's amazing that kids continue to think it's funny when they're on their 27th time around the circle and they're still saying "duck." It's as if the fun ends as soon as the declare someone the "goose!" I've got to come up with some different games.