Need tips ! Teaching my language to a foreigner

[sirdanilot]

Hey guys !

I got an offer today from someone I know for a very fun but challenging assignment; I'll be spending about ten hours with a foreigner to teach him Dutch (I'm native in that, so that's no problem). What I am supposed to do (or so I heard) is: we walk through the city, I give the Dutch words for what he sees, he writes them down and learns them for the next lesson. En passant I would be able to teach him some grammar (probably mainly focused on noun classes because foreigners seem to hate them and do them wrong all the time because they're practically unpredictable in Dutch). I don't know how well he speaks Dutch right now (he's supposed to speak a bit some Dutch, I think, but I'll ask). I guess the effect of this method greatly depends on it.

So:

1. Has anyone got any experience with this method of teaching? Does it work at all?
2. Any suggestions for where I might go with him? I was thinking of going to the supermarket or the open-air market in the centre of town, pointing to relevant things (common fruits/vegetables, bread, flour; or cloths at the market, pants, pull-overs; or colours of things etc.), but that's just one lesson (at most two). I can't really think of anything else at this point; after a couple of lessons he'll supposedly know stuff like streetlight, bus, train station, sun, rain etc. Hmm, another idea might be what we call a 'children's farm' (a place with goats, sheep, chickens etc. which children enjoy) or a local park or something.

Perhaps I should mainly focus on talking to him in Dutch, thus 'bootstrapping' his knowledge of Dutch (because I'll explain a word he doesn't recognize in Dutch), but he'd need a substantial level to begin with.

Anyone else has any suggestion, ideas, experiences to share etc.? Obviously this can go for any other language too. I'd also like some assignments for grammar I could give him (I will google some of those tonight or tomorrow, but if you have any non-Dutch assignments, you could give them and I can translate them to be relevant for Dutch).

I'll also be sure to update this thread with experiences as my lessons go along

[Astraios]

That doesn't sound very useful at all. Sure, it gives him a bunch of random words, but other than that...? Writing the words down straightaway also seems weird. I would make him memorize the words orally first, then tell him to write them down after the lesson. Talk to him, and make him talk back. Don't just point at a boat and say "That's a boat" and then let him write it down, instead point and say "Do you know what that is? That's a boat. It's a red boat, but I don't like red boats because they're ugly. Have you been on a red boat? Show me where a blue boat is." and stuff like that to stop him writing immediately. Basically, he's the baby and you're the mama.

[ol bofosh]

I learnt a lot of Spanish writing words down then looking them up in the dictionary. Of course it was helped with repeated exposure to the same words, both written and spoken. The "writing down words" bit was the first step in establishing a word in my brain.

[Rui]

I learnt a lot of Spanish writing words down then looking them up in the dictionary. Of course it was helped with repeated exposure to the same words, both written and spoken. The "writing down words" bit was the first step in establishing a word in my brain.

This is true, I am actually incapable of remembering a vocab word unless I see it written down.

@Astraios: if this guy is just a beginner, conversation will be a long way off for him, at least several lessons...so I don't see how saying stuff like "Do you know what that is? That's a boat. It's a red boat, but I don't like red boats because they're ugly. Have you been on a red boat? Show me where a blue boat is" is going to be any help at the start, and in fact, might be a little overwhelming for him since he has no solid word base to work from.

Though I agree that if you only walk around and point stuff out, he'll just have a bunch of random vocab. But that's not necessarily a bad thing in the first few lessons. Once he's good at the vocab like "boat" and colors and other adjectives, it would be more useful to have conversations like you've outlined above.

[Drydic]

One thing I'd suggest is teach him a few simple verb forms, like he/she/it is, ~ goes, ~ has. Not the entire conjugation or even the entire present tense of those verbs, just those forms. My Latin textbook did this in its first lesson and it strikes me still as a damn good idea (unless you're learning Russian, in which case there are 652 ways to say 'he/she/it goes/comes', depending on how you are going/coming :/ ).

[Trailsend]

This sounds a lot like the WAYK system, which I like a lot. In particular, it resembles one of the "canonical" WAYK games, "The Walk."

Here's what pointers I can provide:

Like Astraios, I'd recommend against focusing too much on vocabulary. Vocabulary is fairly easy to pick up on the fly—teach him how to ask "what is that?", and then when he needs to talk about a thing he can get the word for it. Focus more on grammatical frameworks that he can leverage over a lot of different situations. That way, when he picks up a new noun, he can immediately put it to use with all the grammar he's already acquired and will be able to say a lot of things despite not knowing a whole ton of words. (On the other hand, if you focus on vocab first, then he ends up knowing a lot of words but being able to say relatively little.)

But like Chibi, I think you should definitely try to limit your conversations—make it very obvious from context what you're saying at any given moment so that even if he isn't familiar with the words or grammar you're using, he still knows what you're saying. As Drydic Guy suggests, pick the bits of grammar you give to him at any particular time carefully—find a balance between high-frequency structures and simple structures, and pursue those things first. (You don't need to give him the whole verbal paradigm at once; he just needs the necessary pieces to get through the task at hand. Then when new tasks come up that require more of the paradigm, he'll already feel comfortable with the first parts and will be able to leverage them to understand the new material.)

With a little cleverness in how you order your presentation and how you setup the context of the conversation, you can even do this without ever explaining or translating in English. I'd definitely agree with talking to him in Dutch as much as possible—you'd be surprised at how much you can explain this way, even if he doesn't have substantial (or any!) previous background with Dutch. The trick is to start with very obvious concrete things that are easy to show ("What is that?" "That is a car." "Stop, don't walk! Okay, walk." "Look, they are walking. Now we are walking."), and then progressively moving into more complex and more abstract ideas, using all of the previously acquired language to explain it.

Astraios also has an excellent point about encouraging interaction. Make him talk back to you. Even if he just mimics what you're saying and doing, it'll speed up his acquisition a ton.

A market would be an awesome place to go. Look for places where you can have simple, constrained conversations over and over again, especially where those conversations promote highly-useful features of grammar. For example, in a market you might be able to do something like:

A: What are those?
B: Those are apples.
A: Are those apples?
B: Yes, those are apples. Do you want an apple?
A: Yes, I want an apple.
B: Let's go buy an apple. (To vendor) How much for an apple? (To A) One apple is [X amount]. Do you have [X amount]?
A: No, I don't have [X amount].
B: How much do you have?
A: I have [Y amount].
B: Well, I have [Z amount]. I will give you [Z amount], then you will have [X amount], and then you can buy an apple.

You wouldn't have the whole conversation the first time. The great thing about a market is that you can wander around aimlessly, having very similar but slightly different conversations about everything. The first time through you can just identify things that you want and don't want. The next time through you can try buying things, but say "I don't have that much" every time, walk to the next stall, and do the same thing. The next time you can get trickier with things like, "Well I don't have that much, do you have that much?" and so on and so forth—or whatever conversational track would be most effective for Dutch.


Basically, the kind of situation you describe is what WAYK players do all the time. The community has been throwing increasingly common Google+ hangouts of late, so if you'd like to drop in and brainstorm ideas with people, I could add you to the list!

[sirdanilot]

From what I heard from the lady giving me the assignment during a phone call, I actually suspect that he does speak a little bit of Dutch, but that he's stuck and traditional classroom lessons aren't working for him. I don't know where he's from, but judging from his name probably from Turkey or perhaps something Semitic (or Iran, since he's a fugitive). Sadly I don't know Arabic, Farsi or Turkish so that's no help (Biblical Hebrew won't be a very great help I suppose).

That doesn't sound very useful at all. Sure, it gives him a bunch of random words, but other than that...? Writing the words down straightaway also seems weird. I would make him memorize the words orally first, then tell him to write them down after the lesson. Talk to him, and make him talk back. Don't just point at a boat and say "That's a boat" and then let him write it down, instead point and say "Do you know what that is? That's a boat. It's a red boat, but I don't like red boats because they're ugly. Have you been on a red boat? Show me where a blue boat is." and stuff like that to stop him writing immediately. Basically, he's the baby and you're the mama.

I'll certainly try to do this, especially if he's slightly more advanced at Dutch. Usually, perception is a lot better than production anyway. I'll just have to make sure not to talk simplified or anything (as long as I speak clearly and don't swallow half the consonants because my specific dialect tends to do that, he will understand the gist of what I'm saying).

I'm not a very socially-skilled person, so it might take a lesson or two before I'm completely comfortable talking an enormous amount. But that might be a good thing because we might not want to start at a very high level to begin with.

This is true, I am actually incapable of remembering a vocab word unless I see it written down.

This is another problem: Dutch spelling isn't always very transparent, so I'll have to figure out how to correct the stuff he writes down. I think I'll just go through his notes at the end of each lesson and correct his spelling mistakes (and also add the article "de" or "het" because he won't ever learn the noun classes correctly if he doesn't link the article to the words... damn noun classes)
I don't want to spend half the lesson on spelling, since conversation is more important for his situation.

One thing I'd suggest is teach him a few simple verb forms, like he/she/it is, ~ goes, ~ has. Not the entire conjugation or even the entire present tense of those verbs, just those forms. My Latin textbook did this in its first lesson and it strikes me still as a damn good idea (unless you're learning Russian, in which case there are 652 ways to say 'he/she/it goes/comes', depending on how you are going/coming :/ ).

This sounds like a good idea, though I think he knows the most basic of verb forms already.

Dutch has a tricky thing in that you can't say 'there's a boat over there'. You always have to state the position the boat is in: 'Daar ligt een boot' (a boat is lying down over there), 'daar zit een zeemeeuw' (there sits a seagull), 'daar loopt een duif' (a pigeon walks over there), 'daar staat een lantaarnpaal' (a streetlight stands over there) etc. So I can't really use the template 'daar is ' (there is) because it sounds very awkward in most circumstances. Though if I wanted to focus only on the noun, I could use 'dat is ' (that's) so that's not that much of a problem I suppose.

Other tricky things I'll need to consider:

- irregular past tense. he is never going to learn the irregular paradigms if I don't treat them. 'Daar loopt een duif - en gisteren?' (there's a pigeon over there - and yesterday?' he would be supposed to answer 'daar liep gisteren een duif' (there was a pigeon over there yesterday)

- noun-adjective agreement. 'daar staat een zwart paard vs. daar staat een zwarte ezel' (there's a black horse over there vs. there's a black donkey over there)

- counting words above 20 (drieëntwintig is literally 'three and twenty'', which is a bit counter-intuitive at first)

- Syntax is an enormous disaster in general

etc.

[Astraios]

@Astraios: if this guy is just a beginner, conversation will be a long way off for him, at least several lessons...so I don't see how saying stuff like "Do you know what that is? That's a boat. It's a red boat, but I don't like red boats because they're ugly. Have you been on a red boat? Show me where a blue boat is" is going to be any help at the start, and in fact, might be a little overwhelming for him since he has no solid word base to work from.

It's going to be a help because it's a) hearing and getting used to the language, and b) it's putting simple grammar in from the beginning. You don't learn a language well if you start with translated words, and then learn translated sentences to use them in. You learn it well if you start with sentences where you can work it out for yourself what the meaning is. If he doesn't get the meaning of "show me a blue boat" the first time, you do actions and stuff.

[sirdanilot]

Trailsend - thanks for your very informative post ! I'll look into that concept some more and see if I have any questions about it.

I'll try not to focus too much on the specific problems of Dutch grammar, since we'll come along them. I also will try not to teach him useless words like 'traffic sign', but instead focs on sentences rather than isolated words :p

I am not sure if he actually speaks English, I don't think it's very likely due to his specific situation (I am not going to put that on-line, though I don't know a whole lot about it yet). Tomorrow I'll know more about those things. though. In any case, even if he does speak English I'll limit it as much as possible in our conversations. He probably won't be a lot better at English than at Dutch, in that scenario, and I'm not native English too and actually have some limited trouble speaking it since I am hardly ever in situations where that is necessary. French or any other common tongue is also not an option.

Making it so that we have to change a sentence with mostly the same words constantly sounds like a very good idea, since word order can be very, very tricky in Dutch, and I do want him to sound as natural as possible (that's the entire point, after all). I'll make sure to plan a visit to the market if at all possible; Leiden has an enormous market with a plethora of things to see.

(hopefully people won't start talking to us in traditional Leiden dialect since even I find that hard to understand )

[GrinningManiac]

On the debate regarding "is he too much a beginner for conversations" I would weigh in by saying that I've learnt lots of random things in languages because people talked to me (or around me) only in their language and after a while I learnt to pick up certain things.

Kurva!

We learnt our mothertongues through constant, unrelenting exposure to things we didn't understand. Sink or swim, basically. In secondary languages they have the help of books and audiothingies and mnemonics - what they should be getting from a native speaker isn't vocab (get a dictionary!) but instead the acquired ability to hear what's being said and identify individual words within the flurry of foreign gabble. They should be taking from your walk-and-talk an ability to "tune in" to the language and pick up words like they would in English

[Rui]

@Astraios: if this guy is just a beginner, conversation will be a long way off for him, at least several lessons...so I don't see how saying stuff like "Do you know what that is? That's a boat. It's a red boat, but I don't like red boats because they're ugly. Have you been on a red boat? Show me where a blue boat is" is going to be any help at the start, and in fact, might be a little overwhelming for him since he has no solid word base to work from.

It's going to be a help because it's a) hearing and getting used to the language, and b) it's putting simple grammar in from the beginning. You don't learn a language well if you start with translated words, and then learn translated sentences to use them in. You learn it well if you start with sentences where you can work it out for yourself what the meaning is. If he doesn't get the meaning of "show me a blue boat" the first time, you do actions and stuff.

No, I agree with you, I'm just saying giving him that all at once can be overwhelming. Basically, I would probably teach him how to say a couple of important, relevant words to the conversation (like "boat") and then have a couple of sentences that show him how it's used in the sentence and what the sentence structure is like, and gradually add in more vocab. Starting with something like "what is that? that is a boat, etc. etc." is a little much at first, I think. It could be even as basic as introducing 1-2 colors each time or something. (Is that what you were saying at first? It felt like you were saying "Start by saying all of this", but I easily could have misinterpreted that) Or maybe since it's Dutch and thus somewhat similar to English, it won't be a huge issue. But I'm just thinking in general.

I'm definitely NOT saying to avoid conversing until lesson 5 or anything. I'm just saying that for very beginners, it's probably better to break things down into smaller chunks. The "long way off" was really misleading, I think...whoops -_-

I definitely agree with whoever suggested teaching him how to say "what is this?" first (I think it was Astraios?), I definitely think that's one of the best things to do...that's basically how all people who learn a foreign language really well learn vocab. I definitely prefer it to "How to you say X in Dutch?"

[sirdanilot]

Does anyone also have any tips in case we don't share a common tongue other than the basic Dutch he already knows? I think this is the most likely situation we'll be in. I have been in the opposite situation (being with monolingual Portuguese speakers and not knowing certain words) very often, but not in the position were I would be supposed to know the answer. Also very fun if the concept you're looking for actually doesn't exist in the target language; I was looking for buttermilk in a Brazilian supermarket once... it simply doesn't exist there, of course, but oh well.

I guess if he's looking for a word and it's not something he can point to at that moment, we'll just have to wait for the next lesson. If he really wants to he could look it up in a dictionary (provided his language isn't too obscure there's probably a Dutch dictionary for it).

[finlay]

Trailsend - thanks for your very informative post ! I'll look into that concept some more and see if I have any questions about it.

I'll try not to focus too much on the specific problems of Dutch grammar, since we'll come along them. I also will try not to teach him useless words like 'traffic sign', but instead focs on sentences rather than isolated words :p

I am not sure if he actually speaks English, I don't think it's very likely due to his specific situation (I am not going to put that on-line, though I don't know a whole lot about it yet). Tomorrow I'll know more about those things. though. In any case, even if he does speak English I'll limit it as much as possible in our conversations. He probably won't be a lot better at English than at Dutch, in that scenario, and I'm not native English too and actually have some limited trouble speaking it since I am hardly ever in situations where that is necessary. French or any other common tongue is also not an option.

Making it so that we have to change a sentence with mostly the same words constantly sounds like a very good idea, since word order can be very, very tricky in Dutch, and I do want him to sound as natural as possible (that's the entire point, after all). I'll make sure to plan a visit to the market if at all possible; Leiden has an enormous market with a plethora of things to see.

(hopefully people won't start talking to us in traditional Leiden dialect since even I find that hard to understand )

Don't speak to him in English. If he tries to use it act like you don't understand. Obviously I'm not doing exactly this kind of teaching because I'm in a classroom, but it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to ignore it when the kids blab in Japanese because I'm understanding more and more of it. And that's annoying. In theory, if I don't respond to them when they speak Japanese, they should get the hint that they should try and use English as much as possible.

A quick way to drill vocab is to introduce it (in sentences, even if they're simple ones like "this is a boat", "this is a windmill"), and try and get him to point at the correct vocabulary item with "where is the __?" – ideally then you want to switch places and get him to ask you the question. Being able to ask questions is fairly important. Make sure he also knows how to answer with something like "It's over there" so that he isn't just pointing. Come back and repeat it at the end of the lesson, to see if he can remember the things you've talked about without referring back to his notepad. Go back over it next week. And as straio mentioned, colours are easy salient items to teach – red boat/blue boat.

Since you're walking around and probably going to a market or a shop, you can actually go and eschew the usual fake roleplays that go on in normal classrooms and actually go through the process of asking for something in a shop. Perhaps you could roleplay it outside and then put it into practice immediately. And then you can practise numbers too.

Don't worry too much before the first lesson... you'll have to build up from pretty much scratch anyway. Try and find out as much as you can about him – you can also use this as a kind of level check, as you can ask him progressively harder questions about himself and see how long it takes before he can't answer them anymore.

Also, I'm not sure about introducing irregular paradigms straight away – it sounds like it'd confuse him. Introduce past tense after he has a grounding in the present tense. (Also, it's not the most important thing – if he says "daar loopt gisteren een duif" he's gonna be understood, just as somebody who says "yesterday there is a pigeon" would be in English. So just leave it out for the moment.)

As for the teaching method itself, I do rather favour this sort of semi-conversational style which favours interaction, at least as a teacher, but I'm a terrible student, and I would note that I only know any Dutch because I picked it up watching film subtitles when I was in Holland in 2009, so I found written Dutch very useful. This approach is unfortunately almost completely useless for Japanese, where I can only read something after I know what it means and how to pronounce it. And I do know (to varying degrees) English, German and French, and Dutch is just a combination of the three with mangled pronunciation, so I did have an unfair advantage in that case.