The biggest problem is simply how they treat the language here. For a foreigner, English is a method of communication. For Taiwanese, English often tends to be about passing a test or showing off that you can say certain things. If you need any proof of this, simply ask someone the question, "How are you?" You'll see what I mean. That parroted, robot-like response of, "I'm fine, thank you. And you?" drives anyone insane who has taught here for more than a week. This is, however, exactly what they are used to. English is taught as "I say this...you say that." Any deviation easily confuses them. To ask a student who is used to parroting answers to develop their own sentence is, quite honestly, overwhelming to them. If English is about saying what you've heard a million times, it is hard to say something if you never heard it before. So...what do you do?
To do this, the students need knowledge of two things:
1) What a verb is.
2) A good understanding of many of the question words and phrases.
Most teachers like to teach the idea of SVO sentences. (Subject - Verb - Object). They'll want the student to think of the subject first, then the verb, then the object. This is fine to a point, but I find it a little too advanced for a student locking up easily. It also easily leads to many boring sentences. Let me suggest something else....start with the verb.
I can hear you already. "What? The verb? What's wrong with you?" Well...let's take a word and watch what happens.
I draw a diagram similar to this on the board:
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I have the red circle, the two black arrows, and 2 black circles. Above the black arrow on the left, I write "Who....?" and under it I write "What....?" Above the black arrows on the right, I put "....whom?" and "...what?" (If you're not as lazy as me, you can make these and print them up, but I realized in a group setting, having it up on the board helps enough).
To see how to create sentences, let's first look at how this material is actually used. Let's take an easy SVO sentence:
Matt eats a pizza.
We can write this down on a piece of paper, tear it up into different parts ("Matt," "eats," and "a pizza"), and we are ready to begin.
We begin with the verb: eats. We put that down on the red circle (red circles symbolize verbs in the Montessori method...that's for a different discussion another week).
We then go to the subject. The arrow to the left says "Who....? What....?" I pick the appropriate one and ask the question. In this case, it is "Who?" So I say, "Who eats?" (Obvious answer: Matt). I put "Matt" on the black circle.
Then we have the next set of question arrows.
"Matt eats.....what?" (a pizza). We put "a pizza" over that circle and we're done.
As the students understand this, it's fun to switch it around. ("A pizza eats Matt?")
For a student to create his or her own sentence, a little adjustment has to be made, but many of the ideas stay the same. It is important to focus on the verb first so you can ask questions that guide them through this process. If the word they are using to create a sentence is not a verb, still start with the verb. If the word they are learning is musician, still start with a verb. Here's how the classroom discussion might go. (S = Student. T = Teacher).
T = Give me a verb.
S = kick.
T = OK. (Write "kick" under the red circle. Point to the "Who" question). Who kicks? (Notice I wrote down his form: kick, but I used the correct form in the question).
S = A musician.
T = (Write "A musician" below the black circle on the left). A musician KICK?!?!
S = Kicks!
T = (Fix the verb. On the next part, point to the appropriate places on the board as you say them). "A musician kicks....what?"
S = A duck.
T = (Write "A duck" under the black circle on the right).
Now, there are two things I am going to point out. One, there is a problem with the sentence above. Part of the goal of the sentence should be to show that the student knows the meaning of the word. This clearly does not show that. The other thing I want to point out is that there can be more added to this. Let me address these issues separately.
Assuming I am working with a VERY basic level, I would point out that is a good sentence, but it does not show really what musicians do. Don't stop it until you've had a little fun with it, though. Notice the learning that did go on that was non-vocabulary related (subject-verb agreement, beginning knowledge of subjects and direct objects). Still, I would ask the student to supply me with a verb that more fits with the vocabulary word. "Plays," "brings," "carries," "takes" can lead to sentences such as "A musician:
1) plays the guitar.
2) brings his violin.
3) carries his music.
4) takes piano lessons.
Usually, you will be teaching higher level students this exercise since that is where many schools begin requiring sentences of a certain amount of words. For that, we want something where they can add more to the sentence:
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Before you feel intimidated, don't worry. You won't have to draw this on the board. Go over your "Wh" questions. Let's pick up with the sentence "The musician kicked the duck" and see how we can still make this work. For this, you can just write out the sentence across the board as they say it.
T - "The musician kicks the duck....where?"
S- "In the park."
T - "He kicks the duck .... When?
S - Last week.
T - The musician KICKS last week!?
S - kicked
T - (change it to kicked). The duck kicked ....why?
S - because he is mad.
T - he IS mad LAST WEEK?
S - because he was mad.
T - Can we tie it in more with him being a musician?
S - Because the duck eats ....
T - ...wait. (Point to "Last week")
S - the duck ate the musician's violin
T - OK. So "The musician kicked the duck in the park last week because the duck ate the musician's violin." You have to write 10 word sentences for homework. Let's take a look at how many words you have.
(Just so you know, that is 17 words). You'll likely get a few running jokes (I had a student that always talked about his little island in every class). Suddenly, your students will love writing sentences rather than dreading it.
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