Question
I'm in Malaysia, some of you might not know where it is but our first language is not English so some of us are not very good in it. My bf is one of them but I promised him that I'm going to teach him. It's not like he doesn't get English at all, he listens to Billy Talent, he memorizes lyrics and he's currently studying somewhere English is the medium and still manage to pull through each subject. The problem now is, he needs a long time to think before thinking about a sentence, on the spot. how do I teach him English? I'm actually a bad teacher, short tempered even with my own sister. but I want to show him that he can rely on me, teach him the right ways without making him feel insecure. Help me please!
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First of all what you are offering to do is so sweet and shows how much you care for him. My advice would be to just block an hour or two a week where you know you won't be too stressed out and just sit with him and help him work on learning this language. You could come up with mini quizzes for him and make it fun for the two of you to work together on this.
^Mini quizzes are a great IDEA^. Flash cards help with speed too. English is a hard language to master, with all our Nouns, verbs, ad-verbs and so many spellings for one word! (To, Too, Two/ there, their, They're) So just grin and bear it, the more he practices the better he'll get, sometimes it just takes time. It wont always be like this, it will get better hell, it can't get any worse. Just keep that in mind and practice Karma ;-). Malaysia is a BEAUTIFUL country BTW.
It's not an easy task to teach someone, especially not if it's your boyfriend because it's harder to be objective and strict :P But you'll do fine, if he's willing to learn ;-) Maybe you could try to let him translate English music lyrics into your language so it's something he's interested in. But mini quizzes is a great idea too, indeed. :-) You could makes pictures of objects with the word in English under it, or maybe that's a bit too simple, since he already passively knows the language. Make sure to put the focus on the speaking, since he can understand but not speak easily. Good luck!
It's never been easy to learn English. Maybe you can try to speak to him more in English? It will definitely boost the confidence of him. =)
Aw, that is so sweet. It is very hard to learn a new language! Especially English. Maybe watch subtitled movies to get used to the sounds. Every language has different phonemes (sound systems you learn as children. Like the combination of certain letters that make sounds.) It's very hard to pick up and pronounce somethings when you haven't acquired them as a child.
Flash cards, games, or computer games may also be helpful to increase his response time and something you can do together!