Better methods of teaching English as a second language

Our first language is Luganda, it becomes rather difficult for the teachers to introduce the second language. At times teacher force the learners to use it. some learners have no interest in speaking it. Learning materials is also a problem . I need help on how I can promote English language in my school

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Permalink Reply by Ian Grove-Stephensen on July 7, 2008 at 10:10am

If your learners are like ours, they care about football and music, and not much else. Perhaps approach them through their own enthusiasms and offer a small prize for the first good translation into Luganda of a Angella Katatumba song? She has a lovely clear, unaccented singing voice, so she'd be perfect for such an exercise.

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Permalink Reply by ddeubel on July 8, 2008 at 12:24am

Nsubuga,

I second Ian's comments about motivating the students. I'm sure they've heard of Beckham -- why not write him a letter?

Connect them somehow to other classrooms through mail or email. They need to see the world that uses English and how it will make a difference to themselves in their future. Thousands of teachers who you might connect English classrooms with at EFL Classroom 2.0

I'd further add a few things.

1. Get the higher level kids to be leaders. Have them teach/help the others. Student centered.

2. Games. Make it fun and get them to forget they are learning "something". Especially with somthing that is NOT content but process related like language, this is soooo important. Like driving a car -- you can never learn to drive a car if you keep thinking about what you are doing/thinking about the driving of a car....

3. Music. All youth love music! English music can stimulate them and get them interested in language. Even just short rhyming phrases/nursery rhymes/chants...

Just a few thoughts.

David
http://eflclassroom.ning.com

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Permalink Reply by Derwin Kitch on July 8, 2008 at 12:02pm

Hi!

What the other posts said is right on.

There's a website called www.spellingcity.com that is free to use and allows you to enter spelling lists. There are then games that can be played based on those spelling lists. The site will also teach and test the students on that spelling list.

It's a good site and worth the two minutes it takes to check out.

I'm a Canadian currently teaching in Santiago, Chile where Spanish is the first language so we struggle a little bit with using English in the classroom. I would love to work with you and your school. Perhaps we could have our students write to each other or do some other assignments together. I'm the ICT teacher for Grades 1-5 but I'm sure that I could get some classroom/homeroom teachers in on this as well. Let me know if you would like to do that. Both of ours students could benefit!

Peace,
D

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Permalink Reply by Nsubuga David on July 10, 2008 at 6:47am

Hi Derwin;
I would like to thank you for your contributions on the subject and I have no objection as far as linking my children to yours but we can only be effective through the postal mails.At the moment we have only one computer which is used for office work only.
Kind regards.