As Edward says, the morning routine is a great foundation for us and our students. It allows us to teach so many questions and verbs along with practicing prepositions and conjunctions. It also can be expanded when the student does past and future by covering it again using those tenses. Past tense is perhaps one of the hardest things for students as it requires them to memorize and practice so many irregular verbs which by far outnumber the regular verbs in English. Add to that having to add “s” for third person in the answer but not in a question and it is easy to see why students have a bit of trouble with English. But the Smith’s curriculum gives our students plenty of practice to master these skills. And the routines, in general, are precious experience for our students. They force the students to put in the articles and the correct prepositions that are missing which happens to be one of the skills they need to master. The routines give us a chance to teach the difference between “a table by the window” and “the table by the window”. These articles which do not exist in Japanese are a powerful tool in English to create an image of the scene. Of course you can say “you sat at one of several tables near the window in Japanese” but I think it is not normal to be that clear. It is ackward and unnatural Japanese. You also find that the phrase “for a while”, is hard for your students due to the trouble they have pronouncing the “r” sound in “for”. So here might be a good place to propose to your students to take the special “pronunciation course”. Virtually every lesson in the curriculum leads well into another lesson and moves the student closer to a state of mastering the language. Students who work hard to master the material from the Smith’s curriculum will succeed with your help. Motivate them to do so and watch what happens. It can be amazing and very rewarding for you too.
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