How to teach children English in daily life

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This post was last edited by Thank goodness you're here on 2016-1-27 09:10. When children learn a second language, emphasis is not placed on words or sentences; rather, it’s about using those words and sentences in real-life situations when needed. Therefore, teachers should intentionally integrate words and sentences into everyday life, or create games that allow children to understand and master them through activity. If it’s just plain words and sentences, children find it extremely boring and meaningless; not only do they struggle to learn, but it also greatly undermines their interest in learning. But both teachers and parents must have clear goals in mind: which words and sentences are included in this game or in daily life, which of those words and sentences are new, and which ones have already been learned. We need to figure out ways to help children master them and remember them, and the key is to adopt effective teaching methods. 　　This is also a question we often ponder. We can see that the children have laid a very solid foundation in a second language at kindergarten, and it is extremely important that our primary schools also have such an educational environment. But often, when attending schools that do not feature the characteristics of a second language, one has to start learning from scratch again, which wastes the child’s time and energy. Therefore, we also hope that our children can attend an elementary school that is a good fit for kindergarten, so that they can develop well on this foundation. 　　Teaching children English in everyday life is an excellent way of education; language development is inseparable from life, whether it’s learning one’s native language or a second language. For example, during the routine of asking children to drink water every day, as soon as it’s time to remind them to drink water, parents communicate with them in English, and thus the children naturally learn that word or that sentence structure. For example, when eating fruit, you can play the \"little fruit shop\" game with your child: the mother acts as the seller, and the child can choose the fruits they like. In this way, the names, shapes, characteristics, flavors, and so on of the fruits can naturally be expressed in the second language. Or when going out with children on the street and seeing many cars, one can use the second language to name the cars, count them, observe which trees have leaves, what shape the leaves are, what colors the flowers are, and how many flowers there are; in fact, there are many resources in everyday life that can be used as tools for education. It is very meaningful to learn a *second language in everyday life. 　　Many people believe that the most important thing when teaching children to learn English is to create a bilingual environment with good methods for learning English, and a prerequisite for creating such an environment is that both parents must have excellent English skills. And since our English proficiency isn’t high, can we teach the children well? This is an excellent question; we have encountered it in our teaching as well. It is very beneficial for a child’s development of a second language if the parents have a good command of English. If the parents’ foreign language skills are average, then we can use other methods. For example, one can record the activities of kindergarten teachers on tape and let the child listen to it at home, or I can buy some high-quality speaker materials so that the child can watch and listen to them. Moreover, as the child learns*, it is also a process of learning for us parents; we can learn together with the child. Interactive elements are available on the websites dedicated to preparing for the CET-4, which helps create a foundation for the child to communicate with us parents. 　　The parts of the tape that deal with the pronunciation of letters are probably intended to enhance the listening experience; some of those pronunciations are a bit exaggerated. Could this mislead children? If it’s just the pronunciation of letters, then it won’t have any impact on children, as it’s merely the pronunciation of letters. If it is a single word, deliberately pronouncing each letter one by one will surely affect the child’s pronunciation. Therefore, for children learning a second language, it is more important to communicate with people, in everyday life, within natural situations. So when choosing tapes, parents had better consult teachers with experience in this area as well. 　　Allowing parents and elementary school students who do not know English to watch VCDs to learn English yields better learning results than having English-speaking parents tutor their children. Experts say that this view is based on the latest findings from researchers in education, neuroscience, and psychology in recent years. Since the human brain has the ability to process information automatically, it can transform the signals collected through hearing into verbal expressions; this is why children with no prior knowledge of English are able to repeat words after hearing them. If children are exposed to an English environment with constant listening and speaking activities over a long period of time, their listening and speaking skills will surely not be poor. 　　If, as is usual, parents who speak English are used to tutor their children, it is usually the parents who talk the most while the children have little opportunity to speak. This situation of listening more and speaking less can in turn affect the children’s concentration, resulting in poor learning outcomes. If parents who do not speak English learn together with their children, the children’s motivation to learn increases significantly. When parents who do not speak English and first-grade children watch English teaching VCDs and use computer software to learn, it turns out that the parents learn much more slowly than the students, as the parents feel embarrassed to speak. The children, on the other hand, have more opportunities to speak; they correct their pronunciation by watching the VCDs, and after some time, they are able to converse in English fluently.