1021cnn的部落格

I started homeschooling this February, so I decided to start teaching English, and because I always liked kids, my target was to teach toddlers.

I don’t know what I did, but all three of my students are three-year-old boys. I teach a set of twins and an only child. There is a difference between their personality, the twins seem to be more child-like, their age-like, while the only child is more settled, knows bigger words, and is hard to distract when he’s playing by himself.

The twins have basics in English already, so what I do is read them stories, and point out letters, teaching them the sounds each letter makes. Now they’re almost four, so we’re working on their ability to understand the stories and recall the characters and main ideas.

The only child has no basics in English, but we started off too strong by making him sit in place and learn the alphabet. That didn’t work well as he got tired of it very soon and didn’t want to learn. So I recommended that he just play with his toys while I spoke some English to him. Kids at this age learn very quickly, he went from asking “What are you saying?” every five seconds, to knowing the English names of toys he’s playing with, repeating what I say, and following commands.

Getting to see the only child’s growth in English is very rewarding, I learned the different techniques for teaching a toddler with no language background. From teaching the twins, my improvising skills have gotten better, and I’ve conquered the challenges they gave me by asking me for definitions of some objects. I’m still trying to understand how their logic works. “I don’t like you!” *won’t get off my lap