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Unread Nov 24th, 2011, 06:07 am
Chris Patton Chris Patton is offline
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Default Re: How much to teach a 3 year old

We've been teaching small groups of 3 year old for a couple of years now in BSD, Tangerang, Indonesia. We use a mixture of foreign and local teachers, but still manage to do everything without using any L1.

The parents of our students have varying levels of English from advanced/fluent down to none at all. In some cases, we are the only English practice the kids get.

I think building up good lexical width has to be the primary concern here, so lots and lots of vocabulary exercises. After awhile, introducing very simple structures is fine, but I don't think you want to spend time trying to work on actual language knowledge at that age. At best your student will "pick up on" your input and start to repeat the structures.

I agree with arielhud, use lots of gestures and hand motions.

Also, try to keep up a lot of variety and keep individual activities relatively short and succinct.

Good luck!
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