Language exchange party for kids

There are a lot of schools which participate with institutions and schools from other countries having the same main objective: the linguistic and cultural enrichment of new generations of speakers.

Students from different countries meet and start exchanging language(s) while they're making new friends, developing their linguistic skills, exchanging knowledge, and of course, they enjoy spending a good time together whilst they enjoy doing activities and speaking with other students.

This kind of activity is based on an interactionist method, students learn and acquire language through oral practise and they can do several and different activities using communication and interaction between equals.

For instance, the following series is an example of activities that could be used:

1st activity - Presentation of every member: Students can start saying their names, what they study, what they do in their spare time, etc. They can do it using their mother language or in English. If they use their mother language, then they will translate what they said in English, so every member understands what he/she said.

2nd activity - Questions and answers time: students should talk about several aspects of whatever they like (familiar context preferred). Also something about their own culture should be added, for example questions/answers/telling some facts about typical dishes, traditions, mores, etc.

3rd activity - Turn, turn, turn game: this game is based on using a dice and assigning a certain number to every student. If they're more than six people, then there can be more than one group. When they start playing, a student will throw the dice, and it depends on the number, he/she will have his/her turn to ask the member of the group that matches with the number the dice shows, how that person would say a certain word in his/her language. For example, the student asks another member the following question: how would you say "dog" in your language? And when the other person answers, he/she will throw the dice so it depends on the number that the dice shows to match with the member of the group that has the same number to repeat the process.

Duolingo, application for learning

One year ago one of my classmate show me a application called Duolingo. He told me that he practise his language skills with the app every day. I dowloaded Duolingo to my phone and since then I have used it for learning spanish, swedish and even little bit france.

Nowdays we have lots of electronical tools for learning and teaching languages. We have websites, applications, learning channels and even online groups for just helping learners with their studings. Duolingo is nowdays one of the most popular application for language learning. But are these applications really useful to kids?

What is Duolingo?

Duolingo demonstration

Duolingo in classroom

Duolingo is free platform that inclues app and website. In 2014 Duolingo was the first learning application to receive an honorable mention from Apple as the application of the year. Now Duolingo has over 100 000 000 users and 68 different language courses across 23 languages.

What Duolingo offers to users?

Every user have their own profile. Students earn poindevelopment.

ts and coins while making listening, writing and speaking exercises. From stores students can bought items to use or new versions of exercises for practising. Students can make their own goals to website and earn coins when they reach them. Before every lesson there will be instruction about important new informations what students need. Learners can also discuss sentences they do not understand with each others and see which words they remember well and which words they remember well. Users who study same languages can make their own "practise-group" where to study. Teachers can also make their own classroom to see their students

There is a link to the classroom I made:

https://www.duolingo.com/o/mccxqz

Many students and teachers have found Duolingo useful way to learn. Goals give motivation to students and app let learners to choose many languages. Students can start to learn for exampel hedrew, japanese or franch in their free time from basic level. Groups can support each others and they can compete and talk with each others.

Why Duolingo is good way to learn?

- Give possibily to indepent learning

- Give possibility to share learning

- Show language learning funny way, give goals and motivation

- Give children possibilities to learn also other languages

But we can also found some week spots in this way of learning. With Duolingo there is translation and learning is based on mistakes and correction with planned sentences. In the app, there is not real communication. Learners are not always able to use language anymore when context change. Even if children learn translate and understand language better, they have might have difficulties to express themself. Learning in Duolingo is also happening with different courses, step by step. You need to learn earlier topics before you can learn new ones. Even if learner would found one topic interesting, he needs to wait until he reach this point. This might affect to motivation. Duolingo is still only one way to learn, and all the task are pretty similar to each others. Person who for example found communication or storytelling interesting might not get into the Duolingo.

What is still missing in Duolingo?

- Real communication

- Context with using languages out of internet

- Different ways of learning

- Freedom to choose topics from own interest

Duolingo and other learning applications are improving themselfs for being better to learners. The development from the first versions are already huge. But as we can see, applications does not give enough to language learning only by themself right now. These kind of applications give a lot a good materials to classroom and it might be great idea to try them, but they also need teachers own work and creativity besides them. Duolingo for example is planning to add possibility to talk with people and have "languagechanging". That would be some communication added to learning.

A game for speaking skills

               As it is indicated many times, games are vital for children. It is the best way for them to acquire a language. That’s the reason why a teacher should learn games as much as he/she can, so let’s look at a game that I played once and really liked it. Its name is “Call My Bluff” before explain how to play this game, I would like to talk about its benefits: Firstly it is a very good way to improve your students' speaking skills, because they have to ask and answer question during the play. Secondly, it is a perfect icebreaker, because the students should work together and know something about their selves as the game needs some secret information. Lastly, this game is appropriate for every age and do not require any materials and any preparation, so it can be played anytime.

                As for playing, I will explain it through the way we played in the classroom: Our teacher told us 3 things about herself which are that 1) she can speak three languages, 2) she has a big dog, 3) she has been to Canada once. After that, she said one thing that she said was a lie. Can you guess which one? She also allowed us to ask some questions that I do not remember. The lie was the first one. She cannot speak three languages. Thanks to that example, we understood how to play that game.

We worked in pair. I told something that everyone does not know about me and my friend did the same.  1) we both have two kidneys, 2) we watched the movie “Lobster” in the cinema yesterday, 3) we both can speak 3 languages.

After asking some question, they failed to find the wrong one. However, one of my close friend who already knew I have one kidney, find the wrong one.

I was at the first grade in university. It means that game can be played with everyone.

How to practise the new structure

 When we give  a grammar explanation, we teach our students the form of the language, we should also teach them the meaning of the new structure and when to use it. More, we should give create a meaningful practising process for them. To practise a new structure there are some kind of drills like repetition, substitution etc.. but I will give an example of a meaningful drill.

  EXAMPLE:
                           Spanish Omelette; Give  instructions for a recipe and ask for instructions for another recipe.

Ingredients; 4 eggs, 4 potatoes ( diced), 1 onion, 3 spoonfuls of oil, salt and pepper.

1) heat the oil in a large frying pan, add onion and fry it gently until soft.

2) put the potatoes into the pan, season with salt and pepper and cook thoroughly.

3) beat the eggs and pour them into the pan.

4) place it under a grill to brown and then turn out onto a flat dish.
                           
You can also use a video of the recipe while directing.
                                   

Building sentences

We can find language everywhere; therefore, it’s easy to see that we need language and how to build correct linguistic structures to understand and communicate with others. Children have to know the correct form of affirmative, negative, and interrogative sentences, and there are plenty of methods and activities to improve their linguistic skills. For instance, we can use small cards which contain the following words: adverb, adjective, verb, noun, and preposition. We can use this method as a kind of game in which kids will learn and enjoy at the same time while they're using them.

Firstly, we distribute all the cards in 5 bags; all of them should contain several examples of every word mentioned before. Secondly, we ask our students to form groups of 5 or 6 people. When everyone is ready, the teacher will give a bag to each group. Then, we will ask them to take all the cards and, between them, discuss the words that they could use to form sentences. For example, if someone gets the verb card, this person has to find a proper verb which matches well to the previous word. At the end of the lesson, we could ask some groups to share their results with their classmates. If the students ask for some help while they’re doing this activity, the teacher may offer it to them.

A flower story

    Using drama activities has clear advantages for language learning. Drama activity can be very useful in order to develop students’ communicative competence. These activities would help them in the development of oral communication skills and reading and writing well. In addition, drama activities can involve children at many levels, not only on the linguistic one but also on the kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, personal, interpersonal and even naturalistic intelligences. I want show a task which engages most or all of the intelligences. I think that  is a interesting activity to do in class. Maybe you can use it with your students!

     We can take a real plant with a flower to class. We introduce the students to the story of a plant and some specific vocabulary about that, so that they became familiar with it and they could use it appropriately.

    We draw the picture of the plant on the board and ask: what’s this? (a plant/ a flower) We can ask: where do flowers grow? (a garden ,a park).We can point and say the names of the parts: roots, stem, leaves, flower. We can tell pupils that plants begin as a seeds. We point to the seed and ask: What helps seeds grow? (Sun and rain).We tell pupils to stand up. We explain that they are seeds growing into flowers. We ask pupils to copy us. We crouch down and we say slowly: start to grow up and up to the sky. We stretch up and stand on our toes. We hold our hands together at eye level. We say: The sun shines (open fingers a little), the rain falls (open fingers more), and the sun comes out again (open hands and fingers to represent the flower). We say: It’s a beautiful flower.

    We read the flower story: One day, a little bird drops a seed in a garden and flies away. Soon roots begin to grow. Then the seed begins to grow. It grows up and up and up to the sky. The sun shines, the rain fall then the sun shines again. A flower opens. The Little bird flies back to the garden. It looks down and sees the flower. It’s beautiful.

    We can draw a time line on the board. We can show what happens in a story on a time line. We point the beginning of the line (the past), we point to each step (the end of the line is the present).Students can draw a time line about the flower story.

    Once we make sure that all the students had comprehended the story and learn some vocabulary. We divided them into groups. They can mime the story. Pupils mime actions of the bird, the seed, the sun and the rain. Once each team had their characters assigned, students can write their scenes and dialogues. They need a text easy for them to remember when they perform it. So they can improvise the dialogue in case they got blocked when performing the play.

    Through all these activities, children may discover different styles and registers which are very different from their everyday speech as well as the use of verbal and non verbal devices. Drama activities can provide students with an opportunity to use language to express various emotions, to solve problems and to make decisions. Students can improve self confidence, use of language, vocabulary and a good capacity for cooperative work in the classroom. Children learn to use language effectively and creatively while they are experiencing different points of views. Drama activities are a highly valuable as well as an instructional tool. Approaching learning in this manner allows a wider range of students to successfully participate in classroom learning.

Class project: English magazine

    When I try to recall my EFL classes in school, I remember a boring textbook. I remember doing many exercises but with very little variety among them (most were fill-in-the gaps), and write some artificial text with no purpose. English language teacher have always resorted to using a textbook when teaching English as a second language in the school, but sometimes this method don’t work because this book don’t have nothing in common with students' interests of at that age.

 

    Something completely different can help to learning and teaching English. Class projects can be an excellent way to focus the whole class and get them together towards a common goal. Students learn better when they can work together in groups. Collective work can activate and build background knowledge. We can ask our students if they would like a magazine in English about our town. We ask children for ideas for a name for the magazine and hold a class vote to decide on the name.

 

    On the board we write the different sections that magazines have. We will try to include as much variety as possible so there’s something for everyone (our monuments, environmental problems, our heroes, sports pages, film reviews, news, photo stories, comic strip, puzzles, music, interviews, recipes, jokes, etc.)

 

    We will negotiate with children about how long they will need to produce their section and allow sufficient class time for help each group and provide language input and error correction. We can introduce these sections to produce first.

 

Our monuments: Students read texts about our different monuments and complete some questions about them with the help of all members of the group. Then, using cooperative technique, they change their groups and complete a chart about all monuments where each student writes about his or her monument. Students complete a short text about monuments of our town and they can create a beautiful craft: tourist guide.

 

Environmental problems: Pupils create this section to write about environmental problems, their consequences and possible solutions. Students complete a letter for the major and write about environmental problems and how we should solve them. Then, we use "rotating paper" cooperative technique to correct friends’ worksheets. They can practice "should and shouldn´t" to give advice about how to solve some of these problems using an oral activity called "I give one, I take one”. This activity consists on asking a question to a classmate and getting the answer, and after that changing their roles.

 

Who is your hero? Not all heroes wear capes. We meet a lot of heroes in our lives: family, teachers, doctors, policemen... Humanity is incredible and we need to be inspired by those who are near us. We can describe our heroes for the class.

 

    I think that  is a interesting activity to do in class. Maybe you can use it with your students!