Perhaps I will blog more about marketing, as marketing is the field I'm working in and it's one of my favourite topics. Wait for a surprise!

For kids, nothing is more exciting and mysterious than magic.

Teaching kids how to use English with courtesy involves a lot of magic. Believe it or not? That was what I did when I taught the kids how to say courteous English to each other.

I gave each kid a piece of paper with the picture of stars, suns, moons, flowers etc...together with the 5 types of magic words:

1. Thank you

2. I'm sorry

3. You're welcome

4. Pardon me! and

5. Please

First, I asked the kids to look through. Give them situations and ask them how to put these magic words in. And the results of magic? People will be all happy including those who use these magic words. Kids love it? Definitely.

But how to make kids remember that they should use these magic words all the times? I gave them in the next class another piece of paper with the pictures of 5 scrolls of ice-cream and ask them to fill in the 5 magics words they've learnt the other day. Some can fill in 4 words, some can fill in totally 5 words.

A game came along after that with 2 groups of kids taking turn to ask and answer using these magic words. At the end of the class, kids already install those magic words into their memory and trust me, they'll remember those words for a long time.

Repetition in one way or another helps kids to remember what they've learnt. It's just how we can make repetition more interesting and funny for kids to participate in. Kids won't feel that they are forced to do repetition of the lessons but they are actually having fun with everything they've learnt.

Well, watching them smiling after class is a great pleasure, isn't it?

DICTIONARY AND FINGER DANCE

Most of the kids tend to have nightmare with the dictionary. Why?

To them , simply imagining, the definition of the dictionary will be:

DICTIONARY = A THICK BOOK with ZILLION WORDS and WORDS and WORDS = HEADACHES

To simplify it, kids will say:

LOOK UP THE DICTIONARY = I’LL GET LOST!!!

Well, we have electronic dictionary and paper-based dictionary. However, forming the habit of turning paper pages and trace the words will be good for kids later on as they learn how to locate necessary information in an article or essay. Therefore, in my view, paper-based dictionary will do kids a whole lot of goods.

Now return to the issue of how to teach kids to use the dictionary without fear. I’m pretty sure that all the kids have learnt by heart the “Alphabet song”. Okay, so here is the way I’ve used to teach kids to look up the dictionary.

Me: “Can you sing the Alphabet song?”

Kid: “Yes”

Me: “Good, where are your two most active fingers on your right / left hand?”

Kid: “This and this”

Me: “Cool. Now your fingers must dance when you sing the Alphabet song ok? Imagine you are playing game and your fingers each must step on 1 black dot marked on the side of the dictionary. When I say stop, your finger will stop and remain there. OK?”

Kid: “Okay”

And the kid starts singing … with me the Alphabet song. The word we want to look for is “Orange”. Singing until “…L, M, N, O…”, I shout “Stop!!! Keep your finger right there!!!”.

“Now open the dictionary right where your finger stands”.

Kid opened the dictionary… “Okay, so this is O”.

“Good, so can you find ‘Orange’?”

“Uhm…”

“Can you see the letter R after O in ‘orange’? Now look for R in the O category”

Within 5 seconds, the kid found out the word “Orange”.

Make kids have fun and play around with the dictionary. Kids will slowly realize how to use it effectively without the fear of getting lost. Finger dance with Alphabet song and the dictionary… Nightmare now become fun…