Wing wrote in to ask:
Hi, Richard: When you are teaching kids whose mother tongues are not English. They have to think in their mother languages first, and then pick the English words to respond your questions, or talk to you. In this situation what can you do to change their habit in thinking their languages first?
Good question!
This is where the Genki English classroom games come into play, because if they think and then translate they can’t win the game!
Because of the time limit the only way to win is to think in English.
The “Lines Quiz” is a classic example of this:
https://genkienglish.net/Lines.htm
But of course it works with any of the games in the manual: https://genkienglish.net/manual.htm
And then we enforce this more with the “secret warm ups”
https://genkienglish.net/teaching/how-to-review-10-lessons-in-5-minutes/
If you can, give it a try yourself, it’s amazing how it ups your game! 🙂
Do you have any more to add? Do let me know in the comments!
Earn More From Your Passion For Teaching English!
Great question!
I wonder, however, if children really are translating everything into their native language. If you provide things in context and make sure students understand the meaning, children can bypass this step, often times easier than adults!
What I usually do is provide a context for teaching (GE is perfect for this!) If I don’t think a new word is 100% comprehensible, I do check for understanding in their native language. However afterwards, like Richard wrote, I provide lots and lots of repetition so that the language sticks without students having to translate everything.
This is a great question! It made me remember the one thing that brought me down in German class in highschool – whenever the teacher would decide to make us translate first, instead of build sentences right away. (I think it’s not only important to make your students think in English, but also make sure noone is left out – I was very annoyed by what my teacher used to do, but a couple of students really needed the extra translation, because they had a hard time *understanding*. To this day I wonder how could the teacher even find a way to benefit everyone in that situation.)
Yeah, I taught my chinese recently about how to think in english. When coversation is going on and non native speakers are involved, most of them think ONLY about grammar, phonics and their mother tongue.
This is how to train them to think in English:
1. encourage them to make mistakes and be ready to accept their mistakes
2. teach them how to visualize, imagine things and learn a technique called ” spreading activation” : example: “Show me red color” they should visualize : my book is red, apple is red, my shirt is red, my dad has a red car, etc. with this techniques , you can encourage combination of 2,3,4,5 words to sentences etc. I bet you, communication or conversation will be fast in the next lesson.