ROSLYN YOUNG "TEACHING ENGLISH THE SILENT WAY"

Roslyn said "You are going to speak Chinese today"??!! Well that came as a surprise, especially when she said she wasn´t going to say a word! How on Earth..?

Well, facing a board with a number of rectangles, each in different colour, we started learning. She pointed to the first one and mimed with extreme facial movement the first sound without uttering anything, we improvised and finally guessed it.
It went on untill we went through all the small rectangles.

Then she wrote numbers, from 1-5, 10-15, 20-50 and 100. One by one, showing a number and then a rectangle, we comprehended the links between the two. Constantly using mime, facial expression, hands, movements she indicated intonation, length and stress of the sounds.
We got it all, after half an hour we were able to say a total of 15 chinese numbers! :)

English is an alphabetical language, quite different than tone languages as Chinese, but the same principles can and are being applied.

She presented her charts and posters with spelling, in colours, based on different themes (verbs, adjectives, time, pronouns etc.) with which she teaches pronunciation and communication.

In her sessions she prefers coaching rather than telling what to say. That gives learners the freedom to guess and invent, play with the vocal organs, think and finally talk talk talk! One rule she has is - what they say must always be true! No inventions, so they talk about themselves and thus become the "creators" of the lesson, whereas the teacher is a "supervisor".

A great experience!

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