Because you are a native speaker of English, there’s a lot you can do to help interested Mexicans improve their command of your language. In a previous article, we took a look at the most important technique in a good teacher’s basket of tricks: giving feedback in such a way that students can easily discover and self-correct their own mistakes.
In the course of an hour’s “conversation class” you will probably discover a good number of words that are totally new to your student as well as mispronunciations and expressions he or she needs to work on. Even if your student is jotting some of these down in a notebook, it’s important that you also put them on paper (or in a corner of the white board if you are working with a group). This collection of words is extremely valuable as it is a record of exactly what your student needs to work on.
“Pick out two words from this list and use them together in one sentence.” This challenge requires the student to be creative. He or she might pick the expressions “people” and “charming,” and make the sentence: “People likes Lake Chapala because it is charming.” This sentence might be written or it might be spoken. If it is written, you might underline the word “likes” to see if the student will change it to “like,” encouraging self-correction. If the sentence is oral, you could hold up four fingers. Point to the first finger and say, “people.” Then point to the last two fingers and say: “Lake Chapala.” Now get the student to repeat his sentence and if he fails to change “likes” you can point to the corresponding finger to indicate that this is where the mistake is.
The simple challenge of making a sentence using one or two words from a list often results in interesting or humorous sentences, so if you have several students, be sure to have all of them read their contributions aloud.
Note that this is a cooperative rather than a competitive activity: everyone “wins” as long as he or she can make a correct sentence using two words from the list and each individual student benefits from the contributions of all the others, because they discover new ways to use the words and they are frequently drawn into the process of another person trying to self-correct.
Remember the old saying, “Use it or lose it?” Well, it’s particularly true for language learning, so give your students plenty of chances to use expressions they learned in your company and in no time they will make them their own.