I was about to write a post about Social Science - The Capitals of Europe, but I've just found these search terms - in the headline - in the statistics of my Spanish blog, mihijohablaingles.com, so I decided that maybe it's worth giving you some guidelines to solve this little inconvenience: MY CHILD DOES NOT REPEAT.
The first step, as always, is to find out the reasons why your children refuse to repeat the words in English (or any other language you're trying to teach them). Generally speaking, it may depend on shyness, shame, insecurity, frustration caused by a negative event which may have occurred in relation to this type of request or you're just dealing with children who simply don't like to be corrected because they are very competitive and associate the word 'mistake' to 'failure'.
Solution? GAMES
Games where, in order to win, you have to repeat words, read them out loud, say short sentences, ask simple questions, etc. We repeat the word aloud (or only the first syllable when we perceive that they can complete the word on their own) and let our children / students say or repeat them. If we realize that their way of pronouncing it is not appropriate, we repeat it ourselves, again, pronouncing it correctly, without making them notice the mistake. Why? Simply because if the child likes the game, he will want to play it again (and again) and that will give us the opportunity to practice the same words several times, thus he'll be able to learn new vocabulary and its correct pronunciation without pressure. Easy peasy.
While children are playing games they are learning in an informal way and they always want to win, so, while they're playing, they forget their inhibitions, concentrate and try to do their best. Playing games is a powerful tool in the teaching - learning process.
Once they have acquired more self-confidence, being introduced to new contents to play with will be perceived as a natural process.
Which games should we propose to the youngest? In the beginning, we should use very simple games like a Memory or a Bingo and later a Go Fish in order to introduce grammatical structures we want them to learn.
I hope you'll find this post useful and that you'll enjoy playing games and practicing English together with your children.
More play ideas for children
--> I'd like to read this post in Spanish
