Sometimes humans have to slow down a touch, to make things understandable. But if we go too slow we lose momentum.
A prime example is trying to learn English in just one hour per week.
All the research (admittedly on non-Genki English teaching) shows once a week doesn’t work.
It’s just far too slow to gain momentum, students forget everything and it takes years to get anywhere!
Now some schools love this, their mouth’s water with years & years of fees with very little work!
But it’s not good for the kids, or for the sanity of the teacher.
I’m pretty sure there’s no way I could teach with just one lesson per week – it would be so slow & drive me crazy!
But what if parents can’t spare an extra hour in the week?
I had the same problem!
So I looked and realised that the kids do have little breaks everyday.
“What if we used a one-minute audio gap each day to make the learning stick?”
Word lists? Too boring. Skits? Too predictable. It had to be something kids would love—something they’d want to hear again and again.
If we had a fun, catchy “heads and shoulders” type song for every lesson we wanted to teach then that would be perfect!
And sure enough, they remembered everything for the next lesson & we got those amazing results.
And of course now it’s not just the songs, but the kids have the full Genki English software on their devices at home – with the visuals as well as the songs.
So once a week – pretty much ineffective.
Once a week plus one or five minutes per day….. now that’s a powerful combination to make your students the best in town! Give it a try with one class and I’m sure you’ll be amazed at the results too!
Be genki,
Richard
