KARACHI: The Society for English Language Teachers (SPELT), in collaboration with the Kiran Foundation, held an innovative session about a fun-based way of teaching spoken English to little children at the Deep Chand T. Ojha (DCTO) campus of the foundation here on Saturday.

The session ‘Learn English through Pretend and Play’ was led by Kiran Foundation founder Sabina Khatri. It demonstrated the methodology used for students at the foundation to make the learning of spoken English successful.

“Children may be getting 90 out of 100 per cent marks in their exams, and still they may not be able to hold a conversation in English. So a teacher should aim to teach English as a language and go beyond solving the exam paper,” said Ms Khatri.

She said that during the initial days of the foundation, she would sit down with children and ask them about their dreams. “And they would tell me that they dreamed of speaking English fer fer, meaning they wanted to speak the language fluently,” she shared.

SPELT has been holding academic sessions on a monthly basis for the past 39 years, says Gul Jaffri

“I knew I couldn’t make them rote learn the language; I had to use the English Premier League (EPL) way, meaning teach them English through play and learn,” she said, adding that it required some tricks to make the little ones learn English faster.

One of Ms Khatri’s ways of teaching included the ‘Sandwich method’ where she translated whatever she wanted to say from Urdu into English. “Where it takes you two seconds to deliver a sentence, it might take you six seconds to add its translation, but it is worth it,” she said while giving examples.

She added that the method would soon become a game for children.

There were also other methods discussed, such as ‘Molly House’, ‘Prop Stories’, ‘Expressions’, ‘Problem Solver’, etc, where one thought they were playing games though they were actually learning English.

For example, with the Molly House teaching concept, the children are invited into a human-size dollhouse where they are welcomed into different areas such as the kitchen, the salon, the supermarket, the clinic, etc. All these places have their own set-ups, scenarios, and props, like the kitchen, which will have cabinets with cooking utensils, a stove, dishes, a sink and such, for them to learn their functions in English. Similarly, a clinic will have a box full of medical apparatus, medicines and other items for the learner to learn the names of.

With the method of using expressions to teach, the children are introduced to a board of different emoticons, along with clothing pegs to attach to the emoticon that portrays their current mood or feeling, such as happy, sad, angry, confused, etc. After a child attaches a peg to an emoticon, they are gently asked why they feel a certain way to hold an engaging conversation with them.

Another way to kick off a conversation with children is by using the problem-solving technique.

Ms Khatri demonstrated this by deliberately wearing her shoes in the wrong way for a young student, Abdul Hannan, to point out the problem. She told him that her feet hurt and that she didn’t know why this was the case, to which the child quickly pointed out that she was wearing the wrong shoes on the wrong feet. Switching them solved the problem, of course, while also giving the student confidence. He felt like a problem-solver.

“Teachers use this method all the time to give their students a boost of confidence to speak up more. Sometimes they come to class wearing their glasses over their head or with their pen in their hair bun as they tell the students out loud that they can’t find their glasses or pen even though they have looked for them everywhere. Of course, the students point out that they have them on their heads or in their hair to feel more confident,” she smiled.

Earlier, Gul Jaffri of SPELT informed that this was their 466th free academic session, which they have been holding on a monthly basis for the past 39 years. “Come rain or shine, or Covid.”

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2023