Teacher-Student

Tomorrow I have a class with a beginner student. She barely speaks a word of English. She just learned the sounds of the English alphabet. Lesson one of the book we use requires that she at least understand a few words. My student does not.

I just pow wow with my roommate with Scriviner's ideas in mind. He talks about five steps of learning: Do, Recall, Reflect, Conclude, Prepare.

We discussed how I will need a way to communicate with my students. So she will have to understand certain phrases and be able to ask certain questions. Once this basic relationship is established linguistically, the relationship can grow. But first, the teacher and the student. "I am the teacher, you are the student; I am the student you are the teacher". This is the first dynamic that needs to be established.

After this dynamic is established, the dialog between teacher and student can develop toward expressions of taste or opinion, to the exchange of information or inuendo.

It seem to me that the goal with a student is to achieve various levels of conversation. And at first the conversation is limited by the vocabulary and comprehension of a beginner learner.

So, identifying roles is a preliminary step in teaching a beginner student. Getting the student to a place where he or she can ask, "How do you say?" invites the student to search for vocabulary. Eventually, the students wants to express other ideas, feelings, or concepts with the basic rules he or she understands, and the vocabulary he or she has gathered.

Here, you introduce basic grammar while keeping converstation alive. The Callan method can be employed effectively at this stage. Having the student repeat words without thinking about them will master grammatically correct sentences, and know explicitly why they are correct or incorrect structures.

Another point is to allow the students to be aware of how and what they are learning. This increases their attention to the task of learning.