Oral Approach for Soroka Course

I’m sure you’ll agree that a picture is worth a thousand words.

In the “Soroka” course, directions are extremely useful.

Let’s use the recipe for your favorite soup as an example. If you don’t follow the directions, it will turn out different. It might be not very tasty — or, on the other hand, it could be absolutely delicious.

Another example would be traffic laws. If you don’t follow them, you’ll very likely have a hard time driving from point A to point B.

Or instructions for operating, say, the latest smartphone that comes with previously unimaginable features.

The “Soroka” Russian for Kids course also has directions for its use. Our directions are called the “Oral Approach.” And although that elaborate title might indicate complexity, the Oral Approach isn’t all that difficult.

We have a sequence of actions that must be followed: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

So, we listen first. A teacher shows pictures or actual objects and says their names out loud. And students listen. This is the first phase.

Second is the speaking phase. Students begin to repeat after their teacher. When they open their mouths, they themselves pronounce the words. In the beginning, we say the words out loud together, in order to hide behind the group. And then after the group has had a little practice, we start to pronounce the words one student at a time. This is necessary for speaking.

The third phase is reading. After we have listened to the words and pronounced them, we start to read them.

And the final phase is when we write them.

There, that was easy, right? A lot simpler than trying to figure out the latest features on that new smartphone, I’d say!