Kitchen Timer English

Have you ever noticed how some students ask you to repeat what you say much more frequently than other students?

If you’re like me… you really want to help the students. (of course, all the students here at スミス英会話　生駒 are great…)But I noticed that these students often don’t make great progress. Since they ask you to repeat what you say, there’s clearly difficulty listening. I recommend that they do listening practice at home.

These students frequently tell me that they have no time to study. Of course this is what they believe. For them it’s true, they have no time. But I also things that we think we can’t do, we usually can. The only thing stopping us is our belief.

I asked myself how I could help these students and their beliefs? I made an assessment. They are busy. They are short on time. They have difficulty listening. More specifically, they have difficulty remembering what they hear. I made my own term for this in Ikoma. I call it English capacity.

English capacity refers to their capacity to hold what they hear in their head, so they can review it once or twice or even three times to think about the meaning. There is a simple way to improve it.

A simple way for them to practice is just listen and repeat. As they listen and repeat a become better at remembering. They can gradually remember longer and longer chunks of English.

Here’s where the kitchen timer comes in. I tell them to buy kitchen timer. They must choose a point everyday, preferably the same point in their routine, and turn on the kitchen timer for two minutes. During this time they practice listening repeat. I recommend using an MP3 player for this.  After that, I sit back and wait for the results.

The students who do the practice get better, faster.  The students who go to the practice, don’t get better faster. That’s it!

Good luck helping your students!