SK Jengka 6 SPORTS DAY!

SK Jengka 6 hosted it's end of year sports competition!  After a week's hard set-up and practice, I was honoured by being invited to this event.  The standard of athletics and outstanding sportsmanship at SK Jengka 6 is truly admirable.  Congratulations on an amazing event!

-Sarah Higgs, Jempol

English Please! The Monolingual Classroom

To comply with 21^st Century ESL class standards, we should have an “English Only Classroom.”  However, monolingual classes are difficult to execute.  It feels natural to explain in L1, rather than embrace 100% English in the classroom.  Getting the pupils to stop using L1 in class is also a difficult task.  In the face of so many difficulties, how can we create a monolingual classroom?

First, we need methods to (1) encourage English use and (2) creating opportunities to practice English in a monolingual classroom.  Check out these methods from Busy Teacher.

We also need some strategies for motivating students to speak in the monolingual classroom.

There is a controversy over whether it is better to teach in a monolingual versus multi-lingual groups, and I would like to discuss the issue with you further.  Please take the time to look over the  articles above and be prepared to discuss with me on my next school visit.

TQ!

Sarah Higgs, Jempol

This work by Sarah Higgs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Works Cited

British Council. (2014). Bristish Council BBC. Retrieved from Teaching English: Monolingual: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/knowledge-database/monolingual

Busy Teacher. (2014). Speak English? But We All Speak Spanish! How to Teach the Monolingual English Class. Retrieved from Busy Teacher: http://busyteacher.org/15097-how-to-teach-monolingual-english-class.html

TEFL Teaching Monolingual Versus Multilingual Groups. (2014). Retrieved from International TESOL & TEFL Training: http://www.teflcorp.com/articles/87-tefl-teaching-monolingual-vs-multi-lingual-groups/271-teaching-monolingual-versus-multi-lingual-groups.htm

Brighton Kids English Club VI

Brighton Kids English Club VI: complete. 

Verdict: FANTASTIC

At our sixth installment of the neighborhood English club we had nearly twenty participants, and there was no shortage of fun things to do. We made Chinese dragon masks for role-playing, practiced speaking and listening using a wide variety of structures (e.g. What can you do? What do you like? Is it a ___?, singular and plurals, irregular verbs, and much more!) We also created massive bingo boards, and played “Human Bingo with Q&A” to reinforce sentence structures, vocabulary, and spelling. Finally, of course, had snack time –lots of crisps and soda for everyone!

The children have come very far linguistically this year, and demonstrate a growing a confidence with speaking and listening in English. Also, the children are beginning to display some rather fine manners, queuing nicely and (nearly) always using “Please” and “Thank you”.

Our time together is always greatly entertaining and productive, and we look forward to seeing everyone at the next Brighton Kids English Club meeting on October 13!