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Teaching English is not easy

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Our maid requested if Nikita (my wife) could teach English to her daughters. They are 12-14 year and know only the alphabets.

One of the daughters came yesterday evening for her first class. I was watching things as Nikita asked her to write down A-Z. First in capital then in small.

And she did not even understand what capital and small meant. The only language she can understand well is Telugu – her mother tongue. She does not also know Hindi well. It was funny to see them struggle with each other. Trying to understand each other by visual cues more than spoken words.

Fortunately, dad had brought a Rapidex English Speaking Course Telugu book for her. She started reading that. The book had Telugu sentences, their English translations, and pronunciation guide in Telugu. Learning by saying aloud seemed to work and that’s what they did yesterday.

Teaching English is not easy. Especially when both people don’t know each other’s language ;-)

Let’s see how it goes.. Have you taught English to someone? What’s the best way?

Written by Nirav

May 26th, 2009 at 2:23 pm

Posted in Experiences

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