We have three sections.

Section 1. I will show you techniques that you can immediately apply in practice in your lesson.

Section 2. We will talk a little about the theoretical basis. I will tell you what to look at, what topics, and what materials to look for, so that you yourself can develop the skill of teaching children without explaining grammar.

Section 3. How we teach children a language without explaining grammar to them with the “Soroka” textbook.

Section 1

In this section, I show specific actions and comment on them. At the end, I will simply make a summary of the actions without commentary.

Examples are taken from the Akishina-Kagan book “Learning to Teach,” pages 133-136.

Step 1 extended — The teacher shows a picture and says: Девочка читает книгу.

It is better to listen with a picture, without a graphic version. That is, it is better to hear first than to read! Let me remind you that this is the very first introduction to this grammatical structure. The students are not familiar with it yet. Девочка читает книгу.

Step 2 extended — The students listen and repeat after the teacher: Девочка читает книгу.

As soon as we get acquainted with something for the first time, we immediately repeat it out loud. Once is enough for now.

Step 3 extended — The students remember what they have already studied before; they need it for support. So, they remember familiar models like:

Кто это? Это девочка. Что делает девочка? Девочка читает.

To help the students remember better, the teacher asks them questions.

To study this specific topic (which we are now illustrating), the students already need to know and use a certain number of transitive verbs; for example, писать, читать, знать, слушать and учить. They should know inanimate nouns and their gender forms. This is necessary for support when studying a new topic. I have written and spoken a lot about how to train the gender of nouns based on color, and I have a video about the Three Bogatyrs that I use as a teaching aid.

Step 4 extended — The teacher pronounces the word книгу, trying to emphasize the ending with her voice. The teacher’s task is to draw the students’ attention to the third element in the structure. What are the other two elements? Девочка and читает. The third element is a книгу.

Step 5 extended — The teacher pronounces structures of this type with the accusative case of the masculine gender: Она читает журнал. Он читает текст. Они смотрят телевизор.

Students listen and repeat after the teacher (you can use a picture). Let me remind you that the students are familiar with these verbs and already know how to conjugate them. The students are familiar with all the words (TV, etc.).

Here the teacher needs to remove the fear of the new form, which we have already become familiar with. Show that in the masculine gender everything is calm and nothing has changed. Well, let me remind you that by this time your students have already understood the difference in gender and know the gender endings.

Step 6 extended — The teacher needs to find out how the students understood the meaning of the third element. What words can they use? For example, you can make a joke: Ask, Это телевизор смотрит? The students answer: Нет! The teacher asks: Это текст читает? The students answer: Нет! You can take another phrase.

Step 7 extended — The teacher then gives examples with words of the neuter gender. He says: Она читает письмо. Он слушает радио. The students see that these are words of the neuter gender.

Step 8 extended — Finally, the feminine forms are given. The teacher says: Мы слушали музыку. Они читают газету. Оначитает книгу.

Step 9 extended — The students can derive the rule for forming the accusative case of the feminine gender themselves. If the students have difficulty, then you need to show them how the letter changes at the end (if this is a graphic version), or how the sound changes at the end (if they are learning by ear, without a graphic version). Here you can summarize the forms in a table. This is not necessary. You can also write down a sample phrase and translate it into your native language.

Step 10 extended — The next step is what question does the third member answer? Here, the students do not yet know the answer to this question. The teacher should show it to them. Ask a question and give an answer: Что она читает? Она читает книгу?

All the words are familiar to the students, and now the new form of the word book is familiar.

Step 11 extended — Students ask questions about the sentences they worked with today: Что они слушают? – Музыку. Что она читает? – Журнал. Что он пишет? – Письмо.

The primary consolidation of what has been learned occurs — its repeated use, preferably with the use of pictures.

Students ask questions. The teacher monitors the correctness of the phrases. Students’ mistakes, as a rule, appear due to inaccurate knowledge of the gender of nouns. I remind you that the gender of nouns can be studied based on color. I wrote and filmed a video about my Three Bogatyrs simulator. It was created specifically to train gender.

Step 12 extended — We have finished developing language competence and are starting to develop speech competence. Numerous questions are speech training.

First the teacher asks the students, then the students ask the teacher or each other these questions.

Я читают книгу, а вы?

Вы читали книгу или журнал?

Что вы читали?

Что вы слушали?

Что вы смотрели?

Step 13 extended — We continue to practice what we have learned in speech; you need to join the opinion.

Я читаю книгу. – Я тоже читаю книгу.

Step 14 extended — We practice speech. The task is to say the opposite.

Я читала книгу. – А я смотрела фильм.

Step 15 extended — We practice in speech. Situations. You are in a store and ask to show the things. Дайте, пожалуйста …

Step 16 extended — Students learn control of the use of the accusative case orally and in writing. Write down what you need to buy in the store, and then talk about it. Tell what you wrote, listened to and read this week. Tell the class about it. The teacher helps, of course.

Well, that’s it. I took this material from the book “Learning to Teach.”

Let’s draw conclusions.

1) Page 131 from the book “Learning to Teach”: Go from the meaning (sense) to the form. I don’t have a book means the absence of something.

2) Working on cases — pay attention to the verb control: look, watch, what? (a book, a film).

3) Teach students to ask questions for each case form: He looks at the teacher. Where is he looking? Who is he looking at?

It is useful to include repeated questions in the dialogues (“We didn’t hear”):

Он смотрит на преподавателя.

Куда он смотрит?

На кого он смотрит?

На преподавателя.

А! Он смотрит на преподавателя.

4) You need to work with the text, with the phrase, and not with a separate word or combination, and certainly not with the rules.

At the end of the first section, I will make a summary, as I promised: just techniques from the lesson without explanations.

1. The teacher shows a picture and says: Девочка читает книгу.

2. The students listen and repeat after the teacher: Девочка читает книгу.

3. The teacher asks questions: Кто это? Девочка. Что девочка делает? Девочка читает.

4. The teacher says the word книгу, trying to emphasize the ending with her voice.

5. The teacher says the following phrases: Он читает журнал Они смотрят телевизор. Они слушали текст. The students listen and repeat after the teacher. You can and should use a picture.

6. The teacher can joke: Это телевизор смотрит? Это книга читает? The students answer, нет!

7. Then the teacher says: Она читала письмо. Он слушает радио. The students listen and repeat, paying attention to the third word in the sentence.

8. The teacher says: Мы читали газету. Они слушали музыку. Ончитает книгу.

9. Students can derive the rules themselves. In the feminine gender, the form of the word changes. There was the letter A at the end, now it is the letter У. If students have difficulty, then you need to show them how the letter changes at the end (if this is a graphic version), or how the sound changes at the end (if they are learning by ear without a graphic version).

10. The teacher asks the students questions: Что девочка читает? (This was our very first sentence).

11. Students ask questions about the sentences they worked with today: Что они слушают? – Музыку. Что она читает? – Журнал. Что он пишет? – Письмо.

12. We practice in speech — numerous questions. First, the teacher asks them of the students, then the students ask these questions of the teacher or of each other.

Я читают книгу, а вы?

Вы читали книгу или журнал?

Что вы читали?

Что вы слушали?

Что вы смотрели?

13. We practice in speech — join in the opinion.

Я читаю книгу. – Я тоже читаю книгу.

14. Speech practice – say the opposite.

Я читала книгу. – А я смотрела фильм.

15. Speech practice – you are in a store, asking to show things. Дайте, пожалуйста …

16. Usage control: (a) Give me, please! (in a store); (b) answers to questions: What are you reading?

Section 2

The second section involves theoretical situations. I will tell you what to watch, what materials to look for to develop the skill of teaching children without explaining grammar.

In general, I am a boring person, I read a lot of books on the methods of teaching different languages ​​in my time, and now I am broadcasting this. I am not developing anything new; I use what other methodologists have developed.

I have always (all my life in languages) been interested in this — how to teach in such a way that it would be possible to avoid studying grammar. This is how I came to the methods of teaching foreign languages, and then RFL (Russian as a Foreign Language).

Let’s see what they write in the book “Learning to Teach,” page 140. Deductive and inductive introduction of grammar:

1) Deductive — the teacher explains the rule and trains it with the audience. A classic example is the grammar-translation method.

2) Inductive — the students themselves “discover” the rule. This is exactly what we need. All teachers of the methodology note this. What children need is an inductive introduction of grammar.

There is another author from Russia, named Shchukin. He, like me, does not invent anything; he generalizes and tells you about it. In his book “Teaching Foreign Languages,” on page 178, Shchukin lists inductive methods of work.

All of these methods began to appear more than a hundred years ago; for example, the direct method. The developers were Berlitz and Pimsleur. Pimsleur is still working — they have an application for learning foreign languages. And so on.

But the fact is that no one uses these methods in their pure form anymore. Now eclecticism is used in full swing — when some elements (or several elements) are taken from each method and combined, creating new methods.

Section 3

(from my article on grammar)

Those who are familiar with my textbooks know that there are no grammar rules in them, and that all tables with endings are final. We finish studying the lexical and grammatical topic with them.

In the textbook “Soroka” we have many mini-dialogues. The students just needed to practice lexical and grammatical constructions in speech. What we read about in the book “Learning to Teach” are questions and answers.

“Soroka” is written for children. The main thing for me was not to scare the child with grammar. I also know that even if a child knows the rules, this does not mean that he can follow them. Therefore, I have a different approach — in “Soroka” we study the situation, and select words and grammar for the situation. For example, let’s take the topic “agreement of cardinal numbers with nouns.” This sounds scary even for an adult! If we take a small piece of this topic — two hours, three hours, four hours — then it becomes somehow more pleasant. We learned and practiced only four words: the numerals two, three and four, and the word hours. We learned and practiced their combinations. Let me remind you that in “Soroka” we study each form of a word as a separate word. We practiced the word combinations to remember them better. (“Soroka 1,” page 43)

Then we continue with five hours, six hours, seven hours. We learned and practiced in “Soroka 1.” A little later, in “Soroka 3,” we go to the store and pay for our purchases. Our prices are 2 rubles, 5 rubles. Aha! We remember what we learned about hours and time, because there is the same rule there. (“Soroka 3” page 9)

(video about grammar)

(from my article about deriving rules)

I often suggest that my students derive rules themselves. I also write about this in the Teacher’s Book. Why do I do this? What does this give us in studying Russian as a foreign language with the “Soroka” textbook?

First, let’s look at the Teacher’s Book and see what we are talking about.

For example, Lesson 3, Session 2. I quote: The textbooks are open on page 11. The teacher reads the words out loud and asks the students how they can explain the difference in the word pairs идет/идут, спит/спят, сидит/сидят, etc. The student should say that when talking about one person, they use the words спит, сидит, читает, and when talking about several people, they use спят, сидят, читают.

Second example: Lesson 7, Session 1. Quote: After this, the teacher asks the students: “Maybe you’ve already guessed when to say зеленый, and when зеленая? The students give their own answers, making different guesses. If they find it difficult, then give a hint that they need to look at the last letters in the words.

For some teachers, this is very unusual. They are used to the teacher explaining the rule, and then the students practicing it. What happens when the teacher explains and the students “practice”? The students need to 1) remember the rule, 2) see the situation in which this rule is applied, and 3) apply this rule. In my opinion, this is very difficult. In my practice, most young students have rules in their heads in one place, and their implementation is in a completely different place. And it doesn’t matter whether they play chess, cross the road at a traffic light or learn Russian.

I suggest a different way. I suggest giving a situation and showing what exactly needs to be done in this situation. Secondly, I suggest observing the language, what is happening in it, and tracking patterns. What does this give us?

First, it develops observation and analytical skills. This is useful for developing the mind, and it helps in life.

Second, it is also useful because the student himself tries and is using his brain; it is active.

When you bring a rule on a silver platter, efforts are needed only to remember this rule and there is little motivation. This is passive perception.

If we derive the rule ourselves, then this is active perception; we remember it faster and for a long time. Because we have appropriated it, it is ours, we have put our energy into it and we have become co-creators.

Many will say that children do not know how to derive such rules; however, this is not true. Children’s word creation is precisely the result of observing language and deriving rules. Everyone has read Chukovsky’s “From Three to Five.” I have a video about deriving rules: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcueiGVKcVo.

Children all over the world do this, not just Russian-speaking ones. They observe the language, draw conclusions and apply them. Most likely, children draw conclusions unconsciously. When you ask your students to draw rules, they will begin to do it consciously: that’s the only difference.

So, it is possible to teach without explaining grammar. Such methods have been developed for a long time, and they can and should be used in the classroom. This works for both children and adults. This is exactly how teaching is done in the “Soroka” textbook. All the best!

We have two parts. In the first part, I will tell you about the procedure for working with vocabulary in practice.

In the second part, we will get acquainted a little with the theory of the methods of teaching RFL.

Part 1

Stage one:

Getting acquainted with words. This is a very short stage.

The teacher says the word and shows a picture; the student then listens, understands and reacts. As an example, I take numerals. I show a card with a number and say out loud what is written. It is better to take a set of three cards (objects). The student is only listening and does not repeat anything! When we have shown all the new words and heard how they sound, we proceed to the second stage.

The second stage of acquaintance:

We learn to recognize the word. I show the student three cards with different numerals. I say one number. For example, 21. The student shows me the said number. Then I say another number and the student shows it. Here you can repeat after the teacher a little. The duration of the stage is determined by the teacher. If the student says everything correctly, you can move on to the next stage.

The third stage:

Oral drill. The student learns to pronounce new words correctly. In the case of numerals, we take a card, say a number and the student repeats it several times. Just like that: “Nineteen, nineteen, nineteen.” Yes, each word needs to be practiced like this. Yes, the student repeats it several times. Your students will not do this at home, that’s for sure. Therefore, everything needs to be done in class. To avoid boredom, you can come up with some tricks. But drilling is necessary if you want the student to speak later. This stage can be combined with reading. In our case, it is reading from cards. I write a lot about reading from cards, as you will know from reading this blog.

The fourth stage:

It comes when everyone has worked. The student operates with a new word. The teacher and student change roles: The student says the word (numeral), and the teacher shows the number on the card. If you have a group, then everything is much more fun — one of the group members says a word (for example, a numeral), and the other group members show it.

You can finish such a fun lesson with a game. The group lines up. The first student whispers one of the studied words into the ear of his neighbor, and so on down the chain. The last in the row says the word out loud.

Note 1.

Can I use other words: clothes, food, toys? Yes, of course you can! Remember that we take the words that can be simply shown in a picture or by pointing to an object (a table, book, telephone, room, and so on).

Note 2.

I work with Americans. They often confuse numerals that end in 2 and 9. They practically do not distinguish them by ear, and it is difficult for them to pronounce such numerals correctly. So, pay attention to this: Americans need more time to learn the difference. I offer them dictations: 2, 9, 12, 19, 20, 29, 19, 12, 20, 9.

Note 3.

We are talking about beginners, about those who have just started learning Russian as a foreign language. At higher levels, working with vocabulary may be different.

Note 4.

For those interested in how we work with numerals in the RFL “Soroka” textbook, I have a video on this topic. Here is the link .

Part 2

Let’s see what A.A. Akishina and O.E. Kagan write about working with vocabulary. As you know, Akishina and Kagan are very authoritative authors of RFL (Russian as a foreign language) books. Their book “Learning to Teach” is simply a treasure trove of wisdom for teachers. But since not all teachers are familiar with this book, or have not quite mastered the terms, I want to help them and retell what was written with examples from the RFL textbook “Soroka.” Let me remind you that Akishina and Kagan write about vocabulary on Pages 147 to 163 of their book.

Very important! Quote: “At the initial stage, speech occurs primarily due to lexical accumulation.” This means that the more words you have learned at the initial stage, the faster you will speak.

What shortcomings in working with vocabulary do Akishina and Kagan note?

• Too much vocabulary that students do not have time to learn in the allotted time. The optimal number of words that can be worked on during a lesson depends on the age of the students and the duration of the lesson. For example, my students age 7 to 9 study for one hour (60 minutes), and we manage to learn seven to eight words per lesson. Older students can learn more. In the book “Learning to Teach,” the authors write about 20 words per lesson of one and a half hours. These are adults (teenagers are also adults in my eyes).

• Insufficient vocabulary training in class. Students are asked to learn words at home, and in the classroom the words are already monitored. Insufficient training leads to the fact that words are quickly forgotten. Today we already talked about training during the lesson. If you forgot, then read the first, practical part of this article again.

• Presenting words out of context, in the form of lists. This is especially unacceptable with children. All lists, even with pictures, do not help.

• Insufficient work on word formation, which helps students both remember words and expand their passive vocabulary. Word formation is great, especially with adult students. We do not work on word formation with young students yet.

• Insufficient repetition of words in the learning process. Definitely this is not about “Soroka.” In the RFL “Soroka” textbook, all words are repeated in different forms and situations — they are constantly spinning in exercises, words are strung together in different situations. Teachers constantly write about this in their reviews. Therefore, if you study with “Soroka,” words will be constantly repeated.

• Words are not always brought out into independent speech by students. Yes, this is a common mistake in RFL lessons. I constantly write about bringing words out into speech. In “Soroka” we do exercises on bringing words out into speech.

• Akishina and Kagan write about working with a dictionary. This really helps to see a word in all of its ambiguity. But now we need to write a separate article about dictionaries, because there are a lot of them now and they have changed.

• When encountering a new word, the teacher rushes to translate it, without offering the students (where possible) to try to determine the meaning of the word themselves, based on the context, based on the composition of the word, etc. It is important to remember two words here: “Where possible!” That is, sometimes the translation justifies itself. The second point: Yes, the teacher is in a hurry to translate. I learned to restrain myself only recently. I rushed to translate everything. Stop! Let the students think for themselves, they will succeed! Here is the link to my video about the intermediary language in RFL lessons https://youtu.be/vdFIwZcd8WQ

I have shared a lot of information with you today. If you have questions, write them in the comments.

All the best!

The entire lesson should be focused specifically on speech. You need to perceive all exercises precisely as preparation for speech, as steps to conversation.

It is absolutely not necessary to be able to read and write to have a conversation. At all! To have a conversation you just need to be able to:

• listen
• understand what you heard (this is about listening in class; I had articles and videos on this topic)
• know how to react

To know how to react you need to know:

• how words are pronounced, what intonation the sentence has
• speech etiquette
• what form does the word have (in what case is it used, etc.)

Why do I like students to hear the word first? Because it becomes easier for the teacher to teach how to pronounce this word correctly. If a word is learned not from hearing, but from a graphic version, then we need to read this word out loud several times. If you don’t do this, then your eyes will remember it, not the muscles of the speech apparatus. But it is better, of course, to use pictures rather than a graphic version of the word.

The same thing happens the other way around. If you have learned words by ear, you need to show how they are written and read, again connecting what we see with what we hear. Therefore, all the exercises from the Activity Book need to be spoken in order to establish a connection between the eye and the ear, with the word that we heard with its writing, and then we can do the task. When the speaking stage is skipped, nothing will come of the letter in the Activity Book. I write about this all the time in the Teacher’s Book.

To reinforce the pronunciation of words, we repeat them several times. You need to give your muscles time to get used to the word and sentence. How do we repeat? Sometimes purely mechanically. For example, I ask you to repeat three times: велосипед, велосипед, велосипед.

This is the technical side of things, and many teachers make the mistake of skipping this step. Yes, each word needs to be spoken several times, and later you must return to the same word (after 15 to 20 minutes) to consolidate what you have learned.

I have articles and videos about oral drills in class.

When students have learned to recognize a word in speech and when they have learned to pronounce this word, you can start a conversation. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated. It could be a simple question: Что это? — Это карандаш. Кто это? — Это мама. Где ручка? — Вот.

You can play games such as bingo or guessing games. I wrote and spoke a lot about them, and there are many of these games in the textbook Soroka and Sarafan.

We start the conversation with dialogues and only with them! The answers in the dialogues will most likely be monosyllabic: да, нет, вот. This is how it should be at the initial stage.

Monologues should be used at higher levels of language proficiency and for older students. There are no monologues in the Soroka course, because of the age of the students and the low level of Russian proficiency.

In general, Soroka’s entire textbook is about speaking. In the lesson we teach words to recognize and pronounce, and then use them at the right time. We talk in class.

What to do with grammatical forms of words?

In Soroka we study each new form of a word as a separate word. Those велосипед и велосипеда are two different words. And we teach them immediately in the right situation (нет велосипеда) and with the right ending. The student does not think about what the genitive case is, but what the ending is. This is a separate word; it is used in such and such a situation.

I already had articles and videos about output to speech.

And, by the way, my textbook is aimed specifically at speech. Write questions in the comments. Also write how you put it into speech and what you do for it. Best wishes!

Let’s start with how to play

In the Teacher’s Book for Soroka 1, there are games for studying numerals in Russian.

Game 1. Drumroll

The teacher taps a pencil on the table or claps his hands, the students listen carefully to how many times the teacher knocks, and they call out the number in Russian. For example: the teacher claps five times, and the students respond with “Five!” We achieve spontaneity of speech; this is our goal in this case.

Game 2. How many? Сколько?

The teacher clutches several small objects in his fist. For example: matches. He asks the students, “Сколько?” (“How many?”) Students call out the quantity in Russian. (This is important!) They are trying to guess. When everyone has spoken, the teacher opens his fist, shows the number of matches, and everyone counts together. The one who names the correct number wins.

Game 3. “Hide and seek in the castle. Tourists and the ghost.”

This is a game from Soroka 2, page 20. Usually, we don’t allow yelling in class — but here, please yell. From a methodological point of view, in this game the participants must hear (!) the difference between different cases: в подвал — в подвале; на крышу — на крыше; в гостиную — в гостиной. One player is a ghost, and the rest are tourists visiting the castle. The ghost makes a wish for the room in which it is hiding, and writes it on a card. Tourists walk around the castle (you can move the chips) and say, “I’m in the kitchen,” or “I’m going to the basement.” There’s a ghost in our basement. When a tourist says, “I’m in the basement,” this is the time for the ghost to “scare” the tourist by shouting, “Ah!” At this point the game starts over, but another student becomes the ghost.

Let me remind you that this is a game from Soroka 2. We play it when we have gone through the names of the rooms in the house, the prepositional and accusative cases, and can distinguish я иду в комнату — я в комнате. You don’t have to take the playing field from Soroka; you can draw a plan of a house or apartment yourself, or download it online.

Game 4. This is a game of repeated repetition.

So, how do we play? The student makes a guess about what he eats or drinks, writes it on a card, and gives it to the teacher. You understand why he should do this, right? Did you guess it? Write to me in the comments.

I note that this is an ideal way to say all the words and phrases many times. People usually don’t like to repeat themselves many, many times, but we need this to practice. So, we practice it in games. For example, the words “я ем,” “ты ешь,” “я пью” and “ты пьешь.” I call it drilling, and I have a video about drilling. We need this kind of training to translate it into speech. When you’ve said it a million times, it will pop up in conversation. You’ll see.

So, let’s start the game. The group members begin to ask “ты ешь хлеб?” “ты пьешь кофе,” the student answers. The game is over when the group guesses what the student is up to.

Game 5. My students’ favorite game is bingo.

This game includes both listening and speaking. With this game it is very good to repeat learned words.

For those who haven’t played, I’ll explain what to do. Here is a large field to play.

Each student receives a small piece of this field. The presenter has a stack of cards. The presenter pulls out one card at a time and says out loud what is drawn on the card. The student looks at his piece of the field. If he has this word, then he places a chip on it (maybe a button or even a bean). When all of the fields on the card are covered, the student shouts “Bingo!” He won. As I already said, this is a listening game and with this game it is very good to repeat learned words.

Did you like this game? Write in the comments.

Game 6. Coordinate grid.

There is a picture in the textbook, but you can organize a similar playing field from anything and lay out both pictures and real objects.

Here we have communication, and a completely meaningful conversation, and the consolidation of new words, and the repetition of old ones learned a long time ago. Do you like it?

Game 7

Another game that I really like, and which helps in learning gender and number agreement. This game is also from the Teacher’s Book for Soroka 1.

There are pencils of different colors on the table. Students name red pencil, жёлтый карандаш, зелёный карандаш, красный карандаш, etc. The teacher covers the pencils with a sheet of paper, removes one pencil so that the students do not see it, and opens the pencils. The students’ task is to say what is missing.

It turns out that a complex grammar topic like agreement in gender and number, and such an interesting solution is a game. The students are playing, with no idea that this is an exercise. And that’s exactly what we wanted. Our task is indirect goal setting. Students think that they are doing one thing, but in fact they are doing something completely different — which we need for learning, and which is correct from a methodological point of view.

The second part is When we play games in the Russian language lessons.

This is the simplest answer.

First. We play during warm-up. Students (both adults and children) need to tune in to the lesson, move from one reality to another, switch from one language to Russian. Games will be our bridge. It’s easy and simple. It’s like in the movies. In cinema, we need to get to know the hero, find out who he is and what he does. The opera has an overture. We also enter the lesson.

Second. We also play during the end of the lesson. Everyone is already a little tired (and the teacher, too). We need to relieve tension and play so that everyone leaves in a good mood. For motivation, it is very important that students leave the lesson in a good mood.

Third. We play when we need to bring some skill to automaticity. Students do not like to repeat the same thing over and over again. To make repetition interesting and not just boring, we include games.

The fourth and last time, we play — when students are tired and need to change the type of activity. We teachers also get tired, but we have a lesson, we need to teach, we can’t just refer to fatigue and say, “I am sick and tired of you all.” We need to keep working, so we play.

All of the games described (and many others) are in all of Soroka’s textbooks: Soroka 1, Soroka 2, Soroka 3. The games are described not only in textbooks: Many of them are in Teacher’s Books. Watch, play.

Well, now I’ll tell you why I think this is a difficult topic. Because the topic is hackneyed. Everybody and his brother wrote about gamification. But this is normal; since they write it, it means that teachers need it. I regret that now everything is called a game, even something that is not a game at all. Some teachers even think that tests are work games. I saw how children sadly dropped their shoulders when they heard, “And now the game.” That’s why it was unpleasant for me to talk about this topic.

Fortunately, now everyone is passionate about artificial intelligence. This is a new toy, but I don’t know for how long. Also fortunately, the games have been left alone, and you can play normally in class. Now you know my opinion; I’m interested in hearing yours. Write in the comments what you think.

Best wishes!

First, as I wrote before, make your own sentence with the new words you study — at least three. If the word has many different meanings, make sentences with all the different meanings. The word соль can be salt or the musical note G (sol). The word ручка can be a pen, a small hand (of a child) or a handle (of an armchair or a drawer). 

It is helpful to watch TV or movies and write down the words you hear. On TV you hear the speech, not just words. You might remember some of the sayings or phrases and use them later.

It is even better to remember the phrases than words.

I know and very often use another way of learning words and phrases. It is called drilling. It is oral drilling, not writing.

You take a phrase and change it a little bit.

For example: Я вижу письмо. Start to change one word here — insert the words from this list: читаю, пишу, беру, книгу, газету, дом, дерево, маму, сестру, карандаш.

At the end, your sentences will look like this:

Я вижу письмо. Я читаю письмо. Я пишу письмо. Я беру письмо. Я вижу книгу. В вижу газету. Я вижу дом. Я вижу дерево. Я вижу маму. Я вижу сестру. Я вижу карандаш.

Now you can see why it is called drilling.

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