Conversation Drill

This is an idea that works best in smaller classrooms or one-on-one tutoring sessions. You need to know the learner's native language to be able to employ this technique. Whereas many people discourage translation as a tool for teaching, it does have its place especially at the beginning stages of learning.

What you want to do is look up the most common sentences/phrases in English and translate them into the the learner's native language.

Then you break down the sentences into segments and start translating the segments into English, first saying the segment in the learner's native language then in English. After that, you say the the segment in the learner's native language, and they say it back to you in English.

For example in the sentence Yo quiero una mesa.

Teacher: Yo quiero... I want.
Teacher: Yo quiero
Student: I want.
Teacher: Una mesa... A table
Teacher: Una mesa
Student: A table.
Teacher: Yo quiero una mesa... I want a table.
Teacher: Yo quiero una mesa.
Student: I want a table.

This works surprisingly well for the mastery of basic syntax and simple sentences, and can really offer a great boost to your student's confidence level. Most students also get super pumped up as they see themselves improving by the second.


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