Teach English in WuxixishAn KAifAqu - Wuxi Shi

I have chosen the above topic to write about as I will be basing my opinions on my past experiences of teaching foreign students whilst my family and I were living abroad and also because I am passionate about teaching students of all ages how to read. Reading is one of the greatest skills one can possess. It opens doors to all aspects of life, from giving one the opportunity to comprehend any form of written language, to being able to further ones education and finally to being able to perform in the business world. It is a necessity !!! Even though it’s possible to speak a language without being able to read, being taught to read develops phonetic skills, spelling, comprehension skills, vocabulary, auditory skills, written text and speech which all in turn develop the acquisition of language. From my past experiences in teaching young children, my passion still today lies in teaching them the concept of reading. Whilst living abroad, my teaching in turn led to language acquisition as the majority of the students that I taught were trying to learn English or had it as a second language. When teaching any age how to read, one has to begin by creating a scenario whereby the students become excited about the skill being taught. The atmosphere needs to be positive, creative and interesting in order for the excitement to turn into a want and thereafter a passion. Once you have the students enthusiasm the rest will flow more easily. In order to begin the process of learning how to read, the students need to start with the English alphabet. This does not have to be taught in the order of which it falls, in fact it is better to teach the letters according to their written shape and in an order that once roughly six letters have been taught, a variety of two and three letter words can be formed. These words however for foreign students need to be more concrete words rather than abstract. For example nouns instead of prepositions as these can be quite abstract and difficult to describe or explain. However the majority of two letter words are prepositions and thus actions would need to be used to explain the meaning of these words. Whereas visual aids could be used to explain the meanings of nouns and thus in turn consolidate the learning of them. When teaching the alphabet, one learns to blend different letters together in order to form words. From this, the students list of vocabulary increases and thereafter once some sight words/high frequency words have been introduced, for example “the, are, my etc” then sentences can be built by using the words taught thus far. Understandably the age of the students being taught will determine the time spent per letter of the alphabet being taught. The younger students will need longer in order to consolidate the formation of the letter, the phonetic sound and how it can be blended with other letters to form words. Once the students have covered a significant amount of letters and are blending them with ease in order to either code them or decode them into new vocabulary, sentences can then be constructed and thereafter read in simple story books, or in pieces of writing constructed by the teacher. Without the students even comprehending it, their acquisition of language will be improving daily by using receptive and productive skills. As both these skills are as important as each other when acquiring language, they would both be covered constantly in various activities throughout the process of learning to read. Due to the vast amount of vocabulary that would be taught whilst covering the entire alphabet and the ongoing sentence construction methods that would be used, it is inevitable that language acquisition would take place. The majority of a reading lesson plan would involve a large amount of speaking due to the need for drilling of the phonetic sound a letter makes, repetition of new vocabulary taught, sentence construction using new vocabulary and finally actually reading out loud. The ESA lesson plan would work well as during the engage phase the students would be introduced to a new letter, possibly sing a song about it, play a game in order to recognize it or even try to create it using their body to form the shape of it or by using sand or play dough to create it. During the study phase the students could look at pictures of things that start with the sound being taught and try to learn the new vocabulary. Drill work and repetition would play an important role here. There could possibly be a few study phases using various activities to get the students communicating as much as possible about the new letter. The activate phase would be a worksheet or activity of sorts to consolidate the learning of the letter. In this phase, possibly not as much speaking would take place, more reading and writing would be required. By following this procedure, obviously using different activities, techniques, examples and ideas throughout teaching the alphabet, I personally have witnessed unbelievable acquisition of language take place from foreign students learning how to read. It’s an extremely rewarding process to teach and follow as the students gain confidence, firstly within their reading abilities and thereafter the knowledge of the English language. It improves without them even realizing it as their list of vocabulary grows so too does their ability to use it in communication. Grammatical issues can be looked at as they arise particularly when teaching younger students as often their reasoning and understanding of why something is said the way it is, is overlooked and rather just learnt, thus correcting grammatical errors as they arise is often more beneficial to younger students rather then focusing an entire lesson on grammar. This however would be different when teaching older students as they often want to know the reasoning behind why something is said the way it is. In summary I can personally state that the teaching of reading does influence language acquisition as I have taught 4-5 year old Turkish students how to read, with them having no English background and thus us having to start from the very basics of letter sounds to simple English words. However by the end of the school academic year, these young children could not only read but could communicate in English too thus giving me the most unbelievable feeling of pride and realization of the importance of reading and language in the lives of everyone. I’m passionate about teaching this skill as its life changing for those on the receiving end.