Our Methodology

How effective are the resources and strategies used by Lingua Genesis to teach children?

My research has led me to incorporate into each session plan a wide range of materials and approaches which have greatly facilitated the learning of children and heightened their ability to perceive ways in which specific knowledge can be applied to a variety of subject areas.  For example, the numbers between 1 and 12 can be easily reviewed in the study of simple o’clock times and the counting of items or objects, whilst the alphabet may be practised through a series of spelling tests, hang man or alphabetically labelled clip arts depicting objects or scenes which the children must identify after hearing them being read out aloud.

I believe that making use of word and picture association techniques during contact time enables children to absorb and retain an increasing amount of vocabulary, and these are also activities which allow for the application of numbers, colours and plural nouns.

The teaching of adjectives

The children are able to demonstrate a clear understanding of the declension of a range of basic adjectives (e.g. ‘blanco’ (white) often becomes ‘blanca’ if referring to a word also ending in ‘a’) by using them to refer to physical qualities and emotional states of mind. These will often include an overwhelming majority of descriptive words ending in ‘o’, such as ‘alto’ (tall), ‘bajo’ (short), ‘rubio’ (fair), ‘moreno’ (dark) and ‘listo’ (intelligent), the final vowels of which change to ‘a’ when used with reference to nouns with feminine labels, or change to ‘os’ or ‘as’ when speaking about various male or female nouns respectively.  Interestingly, it is helpful for the children to verbally stress the changing vowel or ending of adjectives as a means of teaching and reiterating this point of grammar.  Amongst the worksheet resources devised for the purpose of further learning (see products), the children have access to a selection of tasks whereby they must choose the correct adjective from four multiple-choice options, with the ending to each adjective having been highlighted in bold, which best describe the nouns depicted by a number of cartoon-like images or clip arts.

The application of number in clock times

In the teaching of clock times, which provide an opportunity to revisit the numbers from one to twelve, the children I have taught in the past are only too eager to approach the whiteboard and draw onto the clock face template any time of their choice, before nominating someone else to translate it accurately into the foreign language.  Such an invitation by the teacher instils into the children, particularly the most expressive and outgoing ones, a kind of temporary reign of authority and control which they can exercise onto their peers.  The teaching of numbers is a topic which should, I think, be introduced gradually at a number of stages throughout an academic year, beginning with the construction used to express o’clock times, switching from ‘es la 1 / son las 2 – 12’ (it is x o’clock) to ‘a la 1 / a las 2 – 12’ (at x o’clock), before attaching further sentence elements to this key expression when practising time phrases of a more complex nature, e.g. ‘vamos a las dos de la tarde’ (we are going at two o’clock in the afternoon).

Finally, it is interesting to note that, due to the word order of given clock times in Spanish, as different from our own language, the children’s learning of this topic may be facilitated through visualising digital representations of times, e.g. son las siete (7) y diez (10), written as ‘son las 7.10.’

Improving pronunciation through speech and spelling

I have also focused my attention on how children may develop their pronunciation and confidence with the spoken language – not only in general conversation, but also from the written word. As Spanish is phonetically correct and around 80% of letter combinations are uttered in exactly the same way as in English, I have begun to test the children with basic spellings on a regular basis, taking a random selection of any word, picture and object association games as a revision aid.  In order to inspire the children with the self-belief that they have correctly reproduced a spelling in writing, they are often informed about how many letters the right answer should contain, encouraged to relate the vowel sounds to the alphabet, as it is first learned by children in their initial years of growing up, and ask themselves how these words would be uttered in English.  Incomplete spellings with gaps into which missing letters must be entered are taken as a means of developing an understanding of the sounds unique to the foreign language only.  These include ‘z’ (th), ‘j’ (guttural ‘ch’) and ‘ñ’ (nee + vowel), e.g. ‘spell mozo’ ( m o _ o), ‘spell José’ ( _ o _ é), ‘spell año’ ( a _ _ s), etc.

Gender recognition

With specific reference to Spanish gender, which pertains to masculine and feminine nouns, the children are undoubtedly able to relate this concept to nouns which allude to male or female roles and occupations, e.g. ‘father’, ‘princess’, etc. However, they are often later able to further develop their knowledge in this area by unquestionably accepting the rule which states that almost every noun ending in ‘o’ is masculine and the vast majority of those ending in ‘a’ are feminine.  Plus, they are able to recognise quite distinctly that by switching the final ‘o’ of a noun to ‘a’ very often gives the female counterpart: ‘hermano’ (brother), ‘hermana’ (sister).  Through the use of bold type (e.g. ‘la hermana), word and picture association games and intonation, the children have observed how noun gender also influences a series of determiners, i.e. those words which can be placed immediately before nouns, e.g. ‘un amigo’ (a friend), ‘estas cintas’ (these tapes), los chicos’ (the boys), etc.

Online resources

Lingua Genesis appreciates that it is not authorised by law to ask children to provide their personal contact details without parental consent.  It is for that reason that arrangements have been made in the past with primary schools and parents to e-mail any copies of supplementary worksheet handouts directly to them or post them on an Internet website.  I have previously collaborated with teachers and IT experts to promote the use of media-assisted language learning, to make children and parents aware of the benefits which online resources can bring to this type of learning.