by Jake Hollingsworth // Seoul, South Korea // www.JakeHollingsworth.net
Teach your students to think quickly.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: learning a new language is all about building a new habit. You and I speak fluently because we don’t necessarily need to think about what we say. It’s just what we do. It’s a habit we’ve built over many years.
For our students to effectively learn a language, it is thus paramount to develop the ability to speak and listen quickly; to have a reserve of phrases and sentences that can be coherently and competently rattled off in any given situation. If we as teachers do not teach this skill to our students, we are essentially sending them out into the English speaking world handicapped. If my Korean students travel to the US, it is not likely they will ask directions from someone who has the time or patience to help.
Our ultimate goal must be to prepare our students to verbally give and receive information at the speed of the locals.
BUT…
English is complicated. It’s not easy. It’s not a small language. There are hundreds of verbs. Thousands of verb conjugations. Adjectives. Nouns. Pronouns. Subjects. Objects. Gerunds. Infinitives. Articles. And if learning all of those isn’t difficult enough, we must then start putting them into a million different combinations to form sentences and complex ideas.
There’s a lot to learn, and a lot to teach. So how are we ESL teachers supposed to teach our students to think quickly? How can we push so much into their heads and honestly expect them to spit it all back like they’ve been doing it their whole lives?
Good question.
There’s no quick solution. Like I’ve said before, learning English is a long process. But we can take daily steps to encourage our students to think quickly. Here is what I do with my students…
Everyday, I spend about 5 minutes hurling rapid-fire questions at my students. I will ask about 10 or so consecutive questions to each student before moving on to the next. Simple questions. Nothing complicated. I want them to quickly process information.
What day is it? What’s tomorrow? 2 + 2? What color is my shirt? What time is it? Count backwards from 20. What’s the capital of China? Etc. etc. etc.
Over time I build to more involved questions. But the point is to train them to take in and process words quickly, and then respond even quicker. It’s exactly what you and I do. We’ve just done it for so long we don’t even realize it.
What about you? How are you preparing your students to move beyond a textbook? How are you teaching them to interact confidently with native speakers?
