I was going to keep this video for next year, but it seems to have leaked out on Facebook! 🙂 (Always good to hear people like things though!)
Here it is … the four types of English Lessons or English Teaching, which are you?
(If you’re on email and can’t see the video, click here)
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
I feel I’ve walked myself through all these types.
actually once starting to use GE, it doesn’t need any planning or focussing to enter the F+R stage, it just happens naturally.
The next step is harder for me. But I feel that finally I’ve entered it with most of my classes. It took me a few “generations” of classes. Now I have the 5th generation of 5 year olds, since starting to use GE, and I’d say since the 3rd one (now 2nd graders) goals are getting clear for me and the kids, and so the results get better, too.
Now, Richard, or anyone who can share experience:
I’ve decided to have the kids graduate at 6th grade from my school, from next March on ( at least for the next couple of years). Too many reasons to count up here.
Anyway~ as for results at that age, they will do great~however, what can I tell them to do afterwards? JH won’t cover their “needs” ; what final goal could I set, to make a bad JH education not have any influence on them?
I’ve been thinking to get them to a stage where they will have joy in reading and can tell themselves to read books, but then we know how busy JH is, and they don’t even do so in Japanese.
Unfortunately all the language schools around, even the good ones, go to “test studying” once the kids enter JH.
Richard or others,
With the Genki system and the lesson plans/curriculum, have you written down or shared ‘goals’ for your system? Looking for a kick-starter on this. Today, a lot of schools are using reverse engineering to build their curriculum. Start with making end-goals and building backwards, but not really the case here, and totally understand. I love the Genki system and would love to see ‘goals’ developed to make this a complete system like you said in the video. My hats off to you Richard, keep going…
Hi Mark,
I think it would be great to do this! there should be threads on the forum about it, as we’ve been discussing this a lot a while ago.
Maybe it would be an idea to open a new thread on this. I would be very interested as I think there is so much more to explore and take out of this system than I do .
I hope I fall in the F + R section. Here in China, most of the English in regular school (not to mention other classes) are taught as GT (boring), rote memorization. I’m soon going to be switching to another school that seems to have a better handle on teaching with fun and results (I currently teaching at a training/hobby school) where the boss doesn’t value input from anyone other than the parents who usually have ridiculously high expectations for their kids. When the Chinese assistants make up lessons or provide “tutoring” for their regular school English tests, they are incredibly boring with rote recitation.
I’ve never met anyone who says that the kids should JUST have fun and NOT learn anything like they say in Japan (that is just illogical), so most foreign teachers here fall into the F + R. We want results, the parents require results, and we want to have fun with the kids. I had this discussion with a Chinese consulting English teacher who agreed with me on nearly everything! One of the main goals of English classes at a training/hobby school and should be even in regular school is to create a joy and interest in learning and using English or WHATEVER subject you are teaching. Second, school is not all about just cramming information into heads, it’s about learning how to learn.
I always remember the “give a man a fish and he eats for one day, teach a man to fish he can eat for a lifetime” saying. I apply this to teaching reading among other things. The school I currently work at preaches the teacher READING and then the students repeating over and over again, essentially memorizing the text and “reading”. However, comprehension is next to nil and many of the kids can’t even begin to decipher a word they have never seen before. Sadly, I can’t drive home this point with my boss or the other Chinese staff despite the fact that they usually turn to a dictionary to learn new English phrases and words BY READING.
Rambling again, I see! I’d love to fall into the Goal category someday and churn out smiling, confident English speaking kids…
May be I’m more lucky, because I work for “myself” but there are still many things I have to learn.I’m happy to have Genki English course, so it rather simplified my task.It seems that I am at F+R stage and to be honest don’t have clear understanding of where and how to start to set goals. That was my weak point since I’ve first taught.
The ESL that I previously worked in as an English teacher were and are still stuck in the GT type of teaching stuck in the GT area , totally boring old black and white text books , high speed speaking CD lessons that the kids could not understand , old teaching books with some dating back to 1997 when they where first printed , no media allowed in the classroom at all.
Thank god for Genki , it changes the whole dynamic of the classroom and the kids enjoy learning , the GT system has very poor outcomes,but not with Genki!!!!!
BE GENKI
I laughed about JF! Yes, we have the same understanding that you have to learn something in English class and that’s your GOAL, use F plus R to achieve this G.
In JF, most of the students will enjoy your lesson for a month or two but after that they will realize that they are learning nothing and they get bored.
I have a GOAL, I assess results whether it’s only through observation or worksheets, and make my activities fun with GENKI English!
I’d like to be both F&R and G together. I think it would be the most perfect English teacher Hahaha! If we can design our class,exactly every class, like those you’ve mentioned. I also agree with Sakura. Thanks to inspire me.
You´re always great!
I have yet to watch the video as I can’t access it at work and home is much to crazy right now.
Margit, just a suggestion about what to do in JH. Get on your JH to start an English library. The Disney graded readers are a good start. Encourage your students to read. My main goal for my own children was to get them to read novels written for native speakers. The advice I received was to find a ‘homerun’ series that would get them hooked on reading. I never thought it would happen, but this summer my oldest (high school) finally started reading her first series and started the second book. This made me happier than any score on a test.
Reading for pleasure makes such a huge difference. Lots of studies on how this is much more time effective than studying about the language.
You already gave them a great start and opened a very big door for them!
Loved this post!
I think a great goal would be students communicating in english with kids from all over the world. It doesn’t seem easy but come on, we’re a lot of teachers here and all from different parts of the world, shouldn’t we give it a try? What do you think? 🙂
Hello everyone!!!
I try to be a FR teacher and it’s a little bit hard for me because after classes I feel absolutely exsausted( because lots of activities)))))
HA! Funny to see this at this point!
Every year, after the school year is finished, I sit down to reflect on how the year went and what worked and what didn’t. The result of this is what starts the plan for the following year. So far so good. Thing is, after a good bunch of years out of the market, I went from GT to JF in a slam!
I started in the 80’s – straight up GT and gradually moved to JF – with the kids, because with the older crowd I followed a different route altogether. When I came back into the business years later, I found myself totally overwhelmed by the computer world! In the 90’s I didn’t have access to all this cool computerized world, but in 2000 I got my first second hand computer! I wasn’t working then but when I came back and was totally overwhelmed by everything I found out there! Wow!
So eventually I was all fun & games, but after my first year return I realized my kids hadn’t retained much and that bugged me. In my second year, I decided to go for stage 3: F+R and I got Genki – I thought it was the perfect solution, but it wasn’t – in part. My students loved it, but there was something missing. Having a boss who kept changing things didn’t help. He insisted he wanted the kids to talk – Genki is great for that, isn’t it? – well, not for him. He kept asking questions well out of the program. He has a set series of questions – based on old GT and turning kids into parrots – which is not the way I work. Ugh! Complications back and forth, I remained firm with Genki with at least one of my groups. The kids learned well, but there was still something missing.
At the end of that year I realized I was missing something very important: GOALS! I needed to set goals for each lesson. I needed to focus my lessons on something and then adapt all this to what boss was looking for.
This year I’m trying that. I’m going to take boss’s goals and teach them with Genki and other fun stuff. I’m going to control time spans for each activity, now that I’ve also learned that kids’ attention span varies very little between kids, tweens and teens; BUT, I’m also going to add some of my own goals to all this, because I am a really cool, complete teacher!
I am hoping that this mix of me and boss bring out a happy ending, but at the same time, that setting goals center my classes in a clearer manner, making my preparation less time consuming, more efficient, and getting me the results I want!!! Genki will be a big part of this, but I will also use other material, such as interactive notebooks, to bring all this on.
Ah! Something else I’m adding this year: story time. I have started to put together a lovely and fun library (have almost 30 books already!). This resource is going to take me to the sky! The kids will love it, together with the fun activities we’ll do with them – and yes, with a set goal.
What else have I learnt from this? Not only to set a goal for each lesson, but also set it long term (the school year). See Richard? I’m listening! hahaha
And now, fingers crossed guys! This is going to be our BEST YEAR YET!!!
Forgot one last thing!
Assessments!
We have grown so used to not testing kids at the end of each term that we just don’t do any assessments at all. Assessments are important, and although I have always felt rather uneasy not doing it, school rules were boss.
Well, I think that time is over now. I’m going back to it. I need to be sure my students have learnt what I taught them; and if necessary, go back to it. It’s the only way to make sure my job is well done.
So now you know, assessment time is back. Now, I can say I’ve done it all! LOL! 😉
Totally agree about GOALS! I think we could structure Genki in such a way to provide them, and give different choices for users who can select goals for different ages, different classroom sizes, different class frequencies. I’ve been doing this for 5/6 years old, two one hour classes per week, 4-8 kids per class. Will keep sharing! There’s so many of us, if we all share the systems we’ve created, we’ll have pretty much all the possible options covered!
Margit:
My school works really well with high level of English kids! I frankly believe it’s a pity just to let them go, there’s so much progress to be made still, and so many cool activities that they can’t probably get elsewhere! We’ve created a critical thinking course for example. I can tell you more!
Martin:
I’m in China too! Would love to have a chat! I opened my own centre precisely because I couldn’t stand those places like the one you seem to be working in!
Being Genki
Genki your teaching instructions are brilliant
I can’t discribe how helpful for me has been following your topics
And how much fun learning and amazing results my students archived
Thanks a lot for your good methods you showing round the world
Very appreciat
Personal teaching
I’m to f +L and G in the end of Cours !!
I enjoy your explanations and enthusiasm very much. Sometimes I feel you speak very quickly and have to listen to you several times. But most important is your effort to help us. Thank you and congratulations.