At last, I put all of my things on the teacher’s desk and write down the prices on the objects. I tell them this is a shop; it sells many kinds of things. Then ask some students individually:
T: What’s this?
S: It’s a tomato.
T: How much are the tomatoes?
S: They are one Yuan a kilo.
T: Is it cheap or expensive?
S: It is cheap.
T: What are those?
S: They are apples.
T: How much are they?
S: They are ten dollars a kilo.
T: Is it cheap, too?
S: No, they are expensive.
Finally, I ask them to make up a similar dialogue by using the things they take, suppose they are sellers or buyers. Because of the real objects, they can be easy to understand.
While teaching some verbs we can use body language to help their understanding.
For example, when we teach “run”, we can pretend to run, and ask the students: “What am I doing?” “You are running.”
And also, when we teach “jump”, we can jump and ask: “What am I doing?” “You are jumping.” “Yes, you are right. Can you jump?” “Yes.”
2.3 Give them more chance to speak and listen.
The Greek philosopher Epictetus ever wittily said: “Nature has given man one tongue and two ears that he may hear twice as much as he speaks.” From the saying we can learn how important the listening is in our daily life. About 45% of time of an adult concerns to listening to other people, to the radio, to the music. In linguistic, giving the students a lot of listening activities is a good way of enlarging their vocabulary. On the other hand, it also helps the students improve their listening comprehension.
So in the class, we should give more chance and time to let the students listen. There are many ways:
2.3.1 Listen and sequence
Show them many pictures. The students should find out the right order of the pictures based on what they hear. Students can successfully complete this type of task even when they do not understand every word they hear. This builds up their confidence and helps prepare them for the real world where they certainly will not be able to understand everything they hear.
Example:
1 2 3 4 5 6
There are six pictures; you should give the right order after your listening to the tape.
1、Chinese people like to eat rice for lunch.
2、Do you like potato chips?
3、Every morning I drink milk.
4、My favorite food is hamburger.
5、I’m thirsty. Please give me a bottle of apple juice.
6、The meat looks delicious. Do you want to eat?
The answer is 6, 2, 4, 1, 5, 3
2.3.2 Listen and act
There is a whole method of teaching called Total Physical Response, which concentrates on learning language by listening and responding physically to commands or directions. There are many variations of how this can be carried out in a classroom. With beginners, it is easy to start with simple commands such as “stand up”, ”sit down”, “walk to the door”, “open/close the door”, “point to the window”, “hold up your pencil box”, “put your right hand on your left ear.” etc. At intermediate levels, the commands can become more complex. For example, “Pretend you are walking through mud.” “Pretend you are walking through sand.” “Pretend you are washing your face.” “Pretend you are tying your shoes.” “Pretend you are eating watermelon.”