How to help your child learn English

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The child does not want to learn English in any way, his grades leave much to be desired, and you do not know how to change everything? Our guest Pavel Burtovoy has developed his own method and today is ready to help you get out of the pedagogical impasse.

The son is studying English at school for the second year. I recently found out that his knowledge in this area is just awful. Even the alphabet had problems. I had to do something.

For some reason, the method of memorizing words using double-sided cards did not work in our situation. Probably due to poor knowledge of the alphabet. I am generally silent about various programs for a smartphone: the child's motivation for learning a language is not zero, but rather negative, so that he can be interested in these programs.

I had to rely on the experience of my predecessors to develop and test my own method. Well, and personally supervise the learning process.

A bit of theory

Memorization can be reduced to a cyclical process of three components:

1. Perception.
2. Repetition.
3. Testing.

When we want the information to be remembered by the child, the task becomes more complicated: it is not clear how well he perceived it, how many times he repeated, and testing the student leads to stress and negative emotions in case of a poor result.

Let's look at all three components of the memorization process and how you can improve them.

Perception

For high-quality perception, it is desirable to use as many types of memory as possible: auditory, visual, motor. You can also add such a variety as verbal memory.

Repetition

When repeating the material, oddly enough, multiple recording of the studied words with their simultaneous pronunciation turned out to be an effective method.

I read about this method in the memoirs of a Soviet intelligence officer. He called this technique the most effective for increasing vocabulary.

The effectiveness of combining multiple rewriting of words with their simultaneous pronunciation can be explained by the fact that all possible types of memory are involved in the process.

Rewriting allows you to automate the memorization process, to depersonalize it. In addition, the recorded words document the fact of repetition and allow you to find out which material is remembered better and which is worse.

Testing

When testing knowledge, it would be good to hide the fact of testing from the child, but leave the reward if it is successfully passed. That is, hide the whip, but stick out the carrot in every possible way.

If knowledge is confirmed, then the cycle "perception - repetition - testing" is interrupted. If not, we repeat. This creates an incentive to learn all the material faster.

In this case, knowledge is obtained in portions and checked in portions, and not like this: "Sit down, now I will check how you learned what you were asked today."

How the method works

Since my son did not know the alphabet very well, we started with him. I found the simplest recipes on the Internet, similar to these:

First, I got from my son a complete association of the pronunciation of each letter with its writing: this will be very important in the future. After the alphabet, we moved on to words. For this I used and continue to use a regular student's notebook in a ruler or sheets from such a notebook. In the margins I write the Russian meanings of the words (expressions) to be learned.

On the corresponding lines, you need to write these words in English. Since each word is new, I give permission for the first time to rewrite it from the textbook. Then the son writes the word as many times as will fit on the line.

At the same time, he not only writes, but every time he says the word out loud.

At the end, the sheet turns over, and there is a surprise! On the margins are the same Russian words, and their English counterparts need to fill in all the lines, but without peeping into the textbook.

Three important points:

1. I don’t yell at the child, I don’t blame him for his mistakes.
2. If he does not remember the spelling, then I spell him (this is where a good knowledge of the alphabet comes in handy).
3. If a child wrote and pronounced a word without prompting the first time, then there is an agreement between us that he does not repeat it on the entire line. In the future, the word is removed from the lists. It is considered that it has been learned and the cycle "perception - repetition - testing" is completed for it.

The process is repeated until all words from the original list have been eliminated. The photo below shows about the fourth iteration.

In the same way, we previously taught the alphabet with our son. I wrote in the margins in Russian "hey", "bi", "si", "di" and so on, and my son filled in the lines in English capital and lowercase letters.

Pros and cons of the method

The method has several strengths. Almost all types of memory are involved: auditory, visual, verbal and motor. Learning is stress-free, the student's self-esteem does not suffer.

The rules of the game are simple and fair. We can say that the method works automatically and the result appears as if by itself. A vivid demonstration of the dialectical principle of the transition from quantity to quality. The algorithm is applicable for repeating forgotten material and is easily scalable for different word sizes.

The method provides the student with objective criteria for achieving the goal. There are real incentives to quickly learn everything and go for a walk.

The disadvantages of this method of learning are also obvious: you need a lot of paper and a "supervisor".

The son learned the spelling and pronunciation of the English names of the days of the week in the evening. The next day I got five on the test, the praise and surprise of the teacher. And this is not the only success.

It was also interesting to observe how the material is forgotten if it is not repeated. First of all, the ability to write without mistakes disappears, then pronunciation begins to suffer, and the sound of the word is forgotten last. But the ability to recognize him in the text remains for a long time.

I don't think the method is ideal, but using the described memorization mechanisms, you can always come up with something of your own.