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Week Three: Discussion Task #3

Building puppets with students for a specific purpose

Personally, I am interested in Dr. James Asher's method called the Total Physical Response that use commands in action to teach, which is also excellent for total beginners. In fact, if I was going to teach a class of total beginners tomorrow who had zero English, and I also did not speak their language, so I could not do any translating, I would use actions in my first classes probably for about the first month I would use teach using actions like he said: “Stand up.” And then I would stand up and they would look at me. Then would say “Sit down” and they would look at me. Eventually they would understand “Stand-up” means stand-up and “Sit down” means sit down. Then I would use more and more command and building sentences long, long commands using several parts and this would give them a core of language. They would start to understand English. And then, I would use the same vocabulary and start creating stories using the same words. In this way you can build up and teach beginners without any translating at all. I think that in my settings there is enough space to “employ” a puppet here.
 
Simply saying things like “I am hungry” or “She is pretty” can make our storytelling a bit dull. When talking about something and using puppets at the same time unlocks unlimited potential of imagination for details that can be described more vividly. As of the moment it is not easy for me to tell a story with a puppet but right away the puppet can praise my students, give them instructions, sing songs, and make reviews. The puppeteering will be great for total beginners, I believe. My younger students have already made one puppet for specific purposes in the classroom (see picture below) and I am getting more than eager to give it a try soon.

Need to think and design a well-guided puppeteering activities that are attractive to students. Anyway, from now on I am going to deal with English grammar and writing more naturally through storytelling and puppeteering. It will be funtastic, I hope.

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