With so many new teachers, parents and grandparents joining Genki English over the last few months I have been truly moved by some of the comments that people have sent in.
Tanya wrote in to say:
You were the answer for my prayers!
Christy wrote in to say:
My son has learned English so well with your program, that I no longer need it! Thank you!!
Setareh wrote to say:
You can’t imagine how wonderful and also to the point your tips are.
It hasn’t been a good trip, It’s been an imaginary and unbelievable trip.
Words are unable to express my feeling. your honesty in speech is sensible across the miles and it makes me glad to have this chance to read and hear them.
And one of the most moving came from Alla who wrote:
Your method has greatly helped me because I managed to teach my 6 year old grandson to read in English, and it took me less than 3 weeks, while before he could not learn it during a year. And secondly – I have already recommended your method to all my friends who face the same problem – teaching their children to read.
I can’t really ask for anything better than that – thank you everyone, it really is comments like this that make all the hard work worthwhile!
P.S. If any of you have other stories like this, I would love to hear them in comments.
Earn More From Your Passion For Teaching English!
Wow! What exactly is the 3 week method??
It’s just Genki Phonics, if you do it everyday it only takes a few weeks!
I use Genki English to teach French kids and can not praise you enough, Richard, for how successful the programme is! On a more personal level my 20 month old son likes to sit in on my Saturday lessons and has surprised us recently with how much he has taken in! He loves the disco warm up, eat, drink, dance, I am a robot and superhero and often just comes out with amazing vocabulary that he’s learnt from seeing me teach the older kids! The other day he found one of the superhero print outs and he pointed to each picture and correctly named them…’Swim! Fly! Jump!’ Recently he woke up early one morning and was singingto himself ‘do you like bananas? yes I doooo!’ At 20 months old! Amazing!
On another note I’ve been meaning to ask if there are any new warm up songs in the pipeline? My kids love to start with the disco warm up or eat, drink, dance, or left and right, but it’d be really great to have something new to start with!
This is fantastic to hear Linsey!
For the warm ups, this is how I usually do it!
http://genkienglish.net/teaching/how-to-review-10-lessons-in-5-minutes/
I’m at a new school now but much the same as the last school except they recognize the importance of teaching phonics and reading. They asked me for my opinion on a class they are tweaking and trying to get just right for introducing/reviewing the alphabet letters and sounds to prepare the kids for our “primary” courses which include using Hip Hip Horray books and unrelated Phonics series. This introductory/transition course from our very young learners class uses Scholastic’s Phonics K book.
It is a decent book, but I disagree with the premise of the class, especially after discussing it with the local Chinese teachers (this is a private school, so no one has official teaching training). They want to cover the book in 21 class sessions (2 hours each class session, 1 hour with the Foreign Teacher and 1 hour with the Chinese Teacher reviewing the FT’s lesson, most lessons will introduce two letters in the course of the hour). I think this is too slow…am I wrong about that?
I eventually conceded to their schedule at this point, but then suggested that we can teach the lessons in a different order than presented in the book…the book goes from A – Z alphabetically rather than how the Genki and even later Phonics books in the series present the letters in reading frequency order. Looking at the book, there is nothing that makes it necessary to follow ABCDE…etc, except for some reading stories which the kids aren’t going to be reading on their own.
I suggested that we teach T, then I, then S, etc, and that we teach the same lessons making sure the kids recognize and have a solid foundation in the sound of the letter (which is the goal of the book and course), but then when the kids have learned two, three, etc. more letters they can start forming words. The Chinese teachers said that we will let them form their own words which in many cases won’t be real English words…and that they can do that after learning ABCDEFG…I tried to make the point that if we teach TISPA, etc. the kids will be able to make their own words to sound out and read REAL English words after the very first few lessons. Sure the kids will be able to make the word AB and BA after the first lesson and BAC, and CAB after the second, but wouldn’t it really give the kids a great AHA moment and confidence to spell out and read out a word they have heard many times such as IT, SIT?
They stared at me in disbelief and said, “We just want the kids to understand the sounds and focus on the sounds. We aren’t teaching them new words.” Yeah, FOCUS on the sounds but why not let them start reading right away…and where is the harm? They even said that having the kids read really words would confuse them, doing out of ABC order would confuse the kids…why??? ABC is such an arbitrary order.
Good job, Richard, you’ve made it very difficult for me to do things the OLD way, hah.