Why do I say this is a "movement"? Because I am amazed at the rapid change in the concept of the new generation of parents and the wide pa
Why do I say this is a "movement"? Because I am amazed at the rapid change in the concept of the new generation of parents and the wide participation. Because the huge education system can't reflect the actual demand for English from China's openness and strength, parents began to help themselves. As far as its breadth is concerned, I say it is a huge movement. There is also English enlightenment for children in China, and there is no formal educational institution. For example, there are mainstream preschool education institutions in North America, with education as the mainstay and parents as the supplement. However, our children's English enlightenment in China lacks the scientific guidance of the main role, so I also say that this is a movement. The problems reflected by parents in this high-end interview really summarize the current situation of children's English enlightenment in China.
Although the problem has been raised, it is for a longer and healthier development. On the whole, I am still optimistic. After all, we have seen the shortcomings of traditional things. More and more parents attach importance to their children's original English reading. These are the material basis for the development of children's English enlightenment in China, as well as the advantages of high media attention (Sina has set up a special channel for children's English) and the assistance of high-tech means. I won't say much.
The emergence of the so-called "bottleneck" problem, as the second parent said in the interview, represents that some mothers started very early and persisted all the way. According to her general description, I will extract it here. If there are any mistakes, please refer to the original text yourself. When I was two and a half years old, only I began to show him the original cartoons and audio, and gave him everything healthy. When we were about five and a half years old, we chose a training institution to start studying. By the time I was six and a half years old, I had given my children a lot of original reading, which has been very high for children for more than a year. Now the child is almost 8 years old and goes to the second grade of primary school-many mothers who started earlier have better English, and will face the bottleneck of confusion when they are 7 or 8 years old. The parent explained that the bottleneck period is due to the changes in children's growth and development. Is that really the case? Then why is there no "bottleneck period" in English education for children in North America?
In fact, the emergence of "bottleneck" problem is also a manifestation of the lack of English enlightenment for children in China at present. There are two main reasons for this: first, from a horizontal perspective, children's English enlightenment is not rooted in the soil of children's development; Secondly, vertically, it can't be related to the whole process of second language acquisition (English) in one's life. What the whole enlightenment process lacks is the support of educational theories and methods. As a result of this development, as the parent said, by the age of seven or eight, the bottleneck will be gone. Where should we go?
Let me make an analogy here. If we visit a country and find that people have built a magnificent building, we are determined to go back to our hometown and build such a building. On-the-spot investigation, looking for information, asking people, learning about the foundation of this high-rise building, and even buying the same building materials as others, can we build this building? We are confident and hardworking. No problem. I saw how people built it. We can also build one or two floors. What will happen if we go higher? You'll understand if I don't tell you. Why? Because I don't understand the principles of architecture, I didn't bury the steel skeleton in the basic stage, which is the core! It is invisible. Therefore, when we want to improve our education by learning from western education, we want to be systematic and scientific, learn from and combine with the reality in China, rather than take the tangible things as myths. I don't think this is a scientific attitude, let alone that you can build the buildings you like. Let's give another example. China farmers make airplanes, and airplanes are made. They are really lifelike, and they may be able to fly dozens of meters. But after a short period of excitement, you will understand that this plane can only be a dream, and it can't take you to your goal at will. If you understand this truth, you will understand the cause of the bottleneck problem. Let me analyze it in detail from both vertical and horizontal angles.
First of all, from a horizontal perspective, children's English enlightenment should be rooted in the tree of children's development, and children's English enlightenment is only a branch of the tree of children's development. Without a big tree, this branch has no vitality.
For example, some time ago, I happened to see a young father listening to a friend's children in Weibo, and he began to watch English cartoons. He wondered whether he had started to show it to his children, because his baby was less than two years old. I quickly commented and told him not to worry. The American Academy of Pediatrics has proved that watching TV and DVD before the age of two will not have any educational effect on children. On the contrary, it will also affect the development of children's cranial nerves and have a bad influence on the quality of attention in the future. Knowing this truth, parents will naturally weigh their own gains and losses.
Everyone knows that children's interest is very important in the enlightenment stage, but where is the coordinate point of children's interest? How to discover, how to expand and deepen, and how to make these interests develop into a part of children's knowledge structure based on certain laws are all related to children's development. Without such a basic point, you can draw a gourd, but you can't plant a gourd.
According to the principle of second language acquisition, effective input in children's English enlightenment stage is very important, so what kind of input is effective and meaningful for children must also be combined with their development. China's current children's English enlightenment has borrowed from some English-speaking countries, but the most important part is missing. In English-speaking countries in North America, children's English enlightenment is carried out by formal educational institutions and qualified teachers in accordance with educational principles and teaching methods. On this basis, through the education of parents, we will strive to supplement it in the family environment. Knowing this, we can understand why our children will have a "bottleneck" when they reach a certain stage of enlightenment. Changes in children's growth and development are not the cause. If so, there is no "bottleneck" for children of this age in North America, because people follow certain laws from the beginning and follow scientific methods step by step.
By the way, a question about Disney English raised by a parent. The parent mentioned that' children must be happy in their studies, and Disney emphasizes happiness, so I think we should emphasize the effect'; If we think the effect of Disney English is not so satisfactory, it is not Disney English's fault. People entertain children in English-speaking countries, and the premise of children's entertainment is the support of a formal education system. If there is no such consideration, how can Disney assume the function of formal education and achieve the expected results? This is the same as what I said before. When we started children's English enlightenment in a hurry, compared with North American countries, China's children's English enlightenment was carried out without formal educational institutions, and family enlightenment carried all functions. Under such conditions, it is particularly important for parents to understand educational principles and teaching methods. Otherwise, the skeleton will be missing, although what we see in the process is that children will no longer follow our old path. We have seen the progress of our dream children, but after a few short years of excitement, when we are faced with bottlenecks, we still think that it is the reason for children's growth and development, which is a bit regrettable.
This is my second point. We should look at children's English enlightenment from the whole process of second language acquisition, and build a good skeleton and undertake it well at this stage. This kind of career is not to build the third floor and now set up scaffolding, but to accumulate over time in the basic stage. Each picture book has its own emphasis on reading. Taking picture books as one of the carriers, various educational means and methods are added to cultivate children's listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities in an all-round way.
I used to think that parents in China should learn some reading skills from parents in North America, read the original version to their children and add something to listen to. After all, it is not a major. The bottleneck reflected by parents in this interview caused me to think, and made me realize that this is really no good, because China's children's English enlightenment is a form of parents' self-help. Without the support of formal educational institutions, we can't find the missing part of children's English enlightenment, and we can't find the real reason for the bottleneck. Among them, some parents said that it is a trivial matter for children to spend money on English enlightenment, and children can't afford time. It really makes sense to think about it carefully, so professional training for parents should also be a major feature of children's English enlightenment in China. It would be ideal if kindergarten teachers, primary school teachers and picture book counselors could all be trained. Only in this way can children's English enlightenment in China be on the right track. I believe that if more and more parents realize this problem and have such demand, the market will respond, but I emphasize that it must be truly professional, systematic and practical. A little knowledge of the flags of the United States or other developed countries is really hurtful.
Another misunderstanding of children's English enlightenment is that children's English enlightenment is mistaken for the progress of English education in primary schools, which is even unclear to our authoritative education department. If we made it clear, there would be no education commission that would prohibit kindergartens from "teaching" extra languages. I also happened to see the person in charge of a children's English training institution say hello to children's original English reading in her expert answer column in Weibo, emphasizing their graded English reading resources. In fact, this is only different requirements at different stages, and it is not contradictory at all.
In the interview, the third parent also talked about the subject of English. Talking about professional English or teaching other knowledge in English, children are unable to continue their studies-from this trend, they emphasize both spoken English and high technology. This is also to maintain their interest in coming to class, not to learn English. Once classes were suspended, the children themselves did not take the initiative to ask me to read books, read books and apply English. Still not working.
I admire this parent's insight, and I would like to add that what is lacking here is not only children's interest in learning English, but also a kind of ability cultivation, a way of thinking and the construction of knowledge structure. This ability is not "taught", but cultivated in every teaching process, which provides a platform for children to develop this ability through scientific curriculum. This is also one of the main differences between Chinese and western education.
Another parent pointed directly at the problem of our education methods, and didn't want their children to have childhood nightmares, yes! From childhood squeezed by learning, we all know what a happy childhood means. Is that a child who only plays around and scours around? Give your child a happy childhood! Yeah! Sounds very happy. What I hear most is the comments of China compatriots on my work in Canada: What a good job, just take my children to play all day! I can only laugh it off, because all they see are children playing, but what they can't see is what kind of kung fu is needed behind this kind of play. A few words are unclear. I have to be so "wronged". The same is true of children's English enlightenment. What should be constructed in the reading process of the original text? What's behind skipping rope? Therefore, the happiness education method is based on the principle of precise inquiry, but don't think that you will become a star after learning a few signature moves.
Finally, once again, compared with children's English enlightenment in North America, we are a little lacking in the overall English environment. More importantly, China's children's English enlightenment, children do not have the rich resources contained in the formal education system of North American countries (which can be made up by digging deep into resources); Professional qualified educators can provide regular systematic guidance. At present, children's English enlightenment in China is a self-help behavior of parents, which lacks systematicness and skeleton construction under the guidance of educational methods based on educational principles. Although it is prosperous, it is piled up like a mountain, and it is impossible to build a skeleton for the next stage. In view of this reality, I think parents in China, now that they have set out, might as well learn some educational principles and methods. Also put forward such a topic for me. With the cooperation of parents in China, how can I bring this skeleton to everyone in an easy-to-understand form? Let's end this blog post with one sentence for the time being: I understand parents' desire to get their children out of childhood nightmares, so how can we achieve the educational goal in happiness? How did you enlighten children's English?
If you continue to talk about this topic, Blue Ocean, I admire those parents very much. On them, I see the support of my parents every year: when it is not bright, my mother gets up and prepares meals for me all day, and my father even puts my bike directly in the direction of cycling school. Although my parents didn't guide me from the study itself as they did, they all had the same idea, that is, our Chinese nation's unique fine tradition of attaching importance to children's education. This point, especially after dealing with parents of all ethnic groups in North China, made me look back and sigh from the bottom of my heart:' Our parents are the best. With such good parents' cooperation, I'm sorry that these parents didn't do a good job in education. This is heartfelt, not polite. My experience made me realize how valuable these super-devoted parents are to a teacher. I really don't know how to really cherish all this before I have experienced it. )
How to Enlighten Children's English with Scientific Methods
Fear of mother tongue interference
Under the influence of this view, children in China don't need English enlightenment, and they should wait until they have a good foundation in Chinese. In fact, this is the problem of vertical perspective mentioned in my blog post "Reflections on the Bottleneck of Children's English Enlightenment", that is, putting children's English enlightenment at the special stage of people's second language acquisition will easily solve this problem.
First of all, if your point of view is just fixed on the point that children have just come into contact with a second language, and there is no overall development point of view, the entanglement is certain, and you will find that children will indeed bump into their mother tongue when they come into contact with another language. Some mothers are worried. What should I do if my mother tongue goes on like this? There is also a technical term such as "transfer" to explain whether this phenomenon exists. The answer is yes, otherwise the western second language acquisition research will not put forward such a concept. Education should consider the practical application of various research results. In the application, the short-term effect test and long-term effect test are carried out by analyzing the data of educational investigation and research, so as to provide reference for the application and sublimate the cycle. This is like a doctor who knows all kinds of research results and treats patients by combining the results of various inquiries, while a pathologist may be concerned about how cancer cells mutate under certain circumstances, so taking the research results of such a pathologist can have an impact on a certain point in the doctor's medical treatment, but if you only use this point, you will not see the disease. So I say it is right to say this phenomenon alone, but what we should consider is its application in educational practice. This phenomenon can be ignored in the pursuit and practice of the long-term goal of second language acquisition.
Now let's think about "stupid", or simply understand that the words used by many children are very childlike and interesting for Chinese learning itself. In fact, from a linguistic point of view, isn't the connotation and extension of the concept unclear? For example, I saw my mother on the Weibo that she looked out of the window every night and shouted happily,' Mom, the stars are calling.' Very cute. Analyze it. Did the children here "migrate" the concept of calling when the lights are on to the fact that the stars are on? Grammatically speaking, it must be said that it is improper collocation, but such a cold analysis of children's language acquisition process makes me feel bored and even a little insane. Why can we accept all kinds of phenomena in children's mother tongue acquisition with great interest, but children are nervous and entangled when such phenomena appear in second language acquisition? In the final analysis, this phenomenon is not viewed from a vertical height.
I have analyzed it from the perspective of "stupid" thinking. Let me introduce the actual situation of bilingual education for children in Canada. Many people know that the official languages of Canada are English and French. In fact, bilingualism is only used in Quebec and eastern Ottawa. English is an absolute advantage in other parts of Canada, while French is a political thing. The founder of bilingual education was born in Quebec, Canada. This is an area where the French have an absolute advantage. Faced with the threat of English, the French must maintain their own language and culture, so French is politically compulsory. Later, some British parents thought that their children had too few opportunities to get in touch with French in their lives, so they set up such an immersion plan just because there were not enough French classes in schools. Now it has a history of more than 50 years, and in the process of continuous improvement and development, this language teaching model has been formed. There are many such foreign language teaching settings in the United States, including French, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and other languages. The follow-up study of children who received education in Quebec did not prove that children who received bilingual education in the early stage had obstacles in their mother tongue in the future.
I also have a practical case. One of my children is Korean, and she can only speak Korean since she was a child, so when she was in primary school, she couldn't speak a word of Chinese, and her classmates laughed at her. Last year, when I went home for my summer vacation, we had dinner together. Recalling this experience, she felt very sad and said that she must let her children learn Chinese well. I will tell her that when you jump from a completely Korean environment to a completely Chinese environment, it is wrong for parents and schools not to cooperate, and it is also a teacher's dereliction of duty to laugh at classmates. It's not your fault to educate these children to accept and identify with such differences. You are doing business in Korea now. Can you do this business without your Korean foundation? My son, I insist on speaking Chinese at home so that he can always use Chinese. All I did was tell him the original English book and watch the original animation. He was a little reluctant at first. Then when he was in kindergarten, he made sure that his (English) language ability was not as good as other children. I also communicated with him. He also told me that the teacher couldn't understand what he said and had difficulties, but how did you do it? When Tyr first went to class, the little teacher actually talked to me and took out a stack of observation reports, suggesting that I take Tyr to take the exam. She suspects that Tyr's cognitive development is problematic. I later asked her to have a meeting with her supervisor, tied up my previous textbooks and argued with her. No, I can't write this story in the future. There are too many twists and turns. In short, if the ultimate goal is clear, you can maintain your normal mentality. This is the same as my blog post "Children learn English, parents need three hearts".
Why should English listening enlightenment start with nursery rhymes?
Parents often ask how to cultivate their children's English listening and how to enlighten their English listening. Cherry will take pains to tell them: contact and listen to English nursery rhymes, especially those rhyming nursery rhymes. Today, let's talk about why.
As we all know, English children's songs can help to cultivate English rhythm, and let children learn other important concepts such as mathematics, letters, antonyms and orientation in an interesting and happy way. In addition, they can also help children develop language and music awareness, which can exercise the development of the brain, and nursery rhymes can also help remember and encourage learning new words. Because the words in nursery rhymes may be more difficult than the words children read in books or use in oral English, for example, the word' contrary' does not often appear in children's oral English, but if children learn through a very interesting singing form, they can remember it effortlessly, which will help children read unconsciously. In order to read successfully, children must have a sense of phoneme. By learning to sing a lot of nursery rhymes, it is easier for children to understand that words are composed of various sounds, and gradually form a sense of phoneme, and the road to reading will be wider and wider.
Many studies show that from the perspective of language, children who are familiar with nursery rhymes prefer to continue exploring in the field of language. They may want to know about other adventures of a favorite character, they may want to write a poem they like, or they may want to read more other stories and nursery rhymes to learn more about the adventures of the protagonist. More importantly, nursery rhymes can lead children into the field of reading, especially reading aloud, which is why more and more story books appear in the form of music now. Because it is catchy, it is especially easy for children to remember the lyrics of nursery rhymes, which is also a very important part of learning Chinese.
"Listening comprehension precedes reading comprehension" means that in order for children to understand the meaning of the words they read, they must be able to understand the language. A large number of traditional classic nursery rhymes, such as Jack and Jill and Chunky, are repetitive and catchy. Singing such nursery rhymes helps us remember some basic structures and methods of English, so it is particularly important for children to sing such poetic nursery rhymes to learn English. Some surveys show that children's study in the first eight years is far more than their future study, so how to help children become successful readers and authors at this time is very critical.
Generally speaking, nursery rhymes can help children become successful readers in the future, because adults sing many nursery rhymes to children, and children will understand that reading is a very pleasant thing; Children's songs are easy to remember because they are repetitive and catchy, especially some words and sentences, which can help children read; Another important reason for singing nursery rhymes with children is that the time between parents and children is precious. In fact, nursery rhymes are fun, even fun. Most of them record some colorful characters, which are easy to understand and children have rhythmic memories. They still take pains to read and sing over and over again. Through getting along with and communicating with children, let children feel their important position in the hearts of parents.
By teaching children different nursery rhymes, they can also help them learn different skills. Some nursery rhymes can help children develop their motor skills, such as running, jumping and balancing. Some nursery rhymes can help children develop their fine motor skills, such as cutting, pasting and threading. No matter what kind of nursery rhymes can help children grow up healthily!
When teaching children to sing children's songs, we should pay special attention to the following points:
One: When reading or singing children's songs, we should emphasize the beat and rhythm, especially the rhyming words at the end of the sentence.
Two: When we are reading and singing, we encourage children to join in and point to words to help them read.
Three: Tell children the meaning of these nursery rhymes. Some nursery rhymes may be difficult to translate literally, but explain them to children in a spoken form that they can understand.
Four: using children's favorite nursery rhymes to make nursery rhymes books with children, nothing is more precious than making books with children. You can keep these books forever and pass them on from generation to generation!
Last but not least, sing and read these nursery rhymes often!