Teach English in Jingkou Zhen - Huai'an Shi

Learning first language is straightforward; no flashcards or textbooks needed. When a child first start talking, it is’t from using language study programs. It is from listening to the world around and taking cues from natural speaking. That said, we’ve already established that language is easier for kids, but being easy isn’t everything. There are, however, truckloads of other benefits to teaching kids new languages. Not only does it broaden their cultural horizons, but it can also actually keep their brains healthy. In Italy, the dilemma of studying languages as children is always the same. If a child start to study English in primary school, why do children have great difficulty in making this language their own? The main problem arises from the teaching method, still linked to the "old" method of study. The problems and possible solutions. 1.One reason lies in the didactic model that has been used in schools until now and that has always had the characteristics and typicality of the language itself as a guide to the methodological setting, instead of having the setting up of an effective didactics: the mental process with which one learns a language. In other words, the modern foreign language teacher remains attached to the object of study, the language, without taking sufficient care of what must occur in the linguistic experience of the learning subject, to generate adequate language learning. 2.The teaching of a foreign language (L2), is linked to "glottodidactics". According to this field of study it is possible to learn an L2 through the reading of a textbook. The work that is required from the student is to read, interpret, understand and repeat to send everything into memory. It is a long and difficult type of learning; it is a remarkable mental work, very abstract, which requires a deliberate effort of concentration and is destined to have a result that will not last long. 3.Studying an L2 is not like studying history, mathematical formulas or philosophy which, even if they are partly forgotten, do not compromise the possibility of communicating with others. Learning a language means learning a system of communication that should not be forgotten over time. The simplest and most immediate method is to live in a context where you speak the foreign language so that you are in continuous contact with it. Using and practicing a language is certainly more effective than reading and studying it in a book! Then, a foreign language can only be learned by living abroad? Maybe not. The perceptual-motor (Antinucci, 2001)method is a good one. It means to do, to act, to live an experience in L2 without the mediation of the book; the experience is immediate and you learn by being immersed in the experience itself. It is a type of natural and spontaneous learning, based on "repeated cycles of perception-action" (I look and imitate, listen and repeat) practiced through gestures, under the guidance of a teacher who shows how to do it. The gestures, i.e. acts of meaning, are the basis of perceptive motor learning: the child, amused in reproducing the gesture proposed by the teacher and in understanding its meaning, will not need the translation of the word that the teacher has just said, because he understands it through the gesture. There is no need for awareness, it does not require concentration, it does not make us tired, it is much faster. Whit this method, we notice that children learn to speak just like that. In order to learn a language one must respect the mental processes that are at the basis of language learning (psycholinguistics); only after learning the language it can be appropriate to move on to teach the grammar and syntax of that (linguistic).