Teaching non-native kids

Hi,

Can anyone recommend me some good ways to teach non-native kids English writing and reading?

They can now read and write in their first language and were learning English in this year, but from next year they will have to learn to read and write English words.

Any idea?

Thanks

Which alphabet do they use for their own language?

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Originally Posted by 5jj

Which alphabet do they use for their own language?

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Their first language is Hungarian.

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Originally Posted by dtommy79

Their first language is Hungarian.

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So they use the Roman alphabet, so you don't have to teach them to write as such. Unfortunately, Hungarian has, I believe, a near one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and letters, so they will have a few problems with spelling.

My limited experience of teaching young children who already know the Roman alphabet is that learning to read and write English presents very few problems if the words encountered initially are ones that they know already, as will be the case with your pupils. I don't understand why, but non-native speakers, especially children, seem to take the quirks of English spelling in their stride. They will make mistakes of course, as native-speaking children (and adults!) do, and oddities such as the ough words are troublesome, but real oddities are comparatively rare.

I've just started teaching 2 nine year olds on Skype who are complete beginners. And I am having massive success with these pages from the British Council

LearnEnglish Kids | British Council |

The games are superb for communication over the computer. Here is one of my favourites.

Make your Monster | LearnEnglish Kids | British Council

There are some great speaking activities that you can do in class on this theme of parts of the body and colours. E.g Make your own monsters with coloured pens and paper. I used to have a spot the difference with Monsters too. Kids love spot the differences. Counting games for numbers. Blindfold games for prepositions. Simon says works for body parts and simple verbs. The list is actually endless.....

When they get a bit older and stronger, use graded readers. Level 1 to start with, obviously.

Happy Teaching!