Do you have concerns for your child’s English Language proficiency? Be better prepared for a good head start in 2018.

Experts revealed that preparing your child for school has several benefits such as building confidence in them and also reducing stress on your child.

As such, does your child have any learning gaps that are preventing them from being better in English?

Learning gaps that your child may be experiencing

1. They have difficulty in organizing thoughts and ideas

Many children face challenges in organizing their ideas and moving from one idea to the next with a logical transition. Some of them also face difficulties in analysing clues in a given text and interpreting the text effectively.

2. They are unable to speak well in front of unfamiliar audience

Most children can speak well with their parents and among their peers, but not all are confident to express themselves naturally in front of unfamiliar audience. For example, some children get emotionally hijacked and perceive oral examination as a difficult hurdle to conquer.

3. They are often disengaged during learning

A child’s brain is like a sponge: don’t discount the memory work. Often, children are capable of picking up new vocabulary words and are very eager to “show off” to their parents about their new learning through daily living.

Unfortunately, when learning is disengaged from real-life events or highly dependent on rote memory, children may find it difficult to appreciate the meaning of words and lack the practices of creating ideas from words.

So how can you help your child close his or her learning gaps in the English Language this holiday?

1. Encourage your child to practise critical thinking and share ideas

Children who are open-minded and have alternative ways of looking at problems are more capable of organising ideas logically and effectively.

They are not easily stuck in the past experiences or rigid about ideas.

This is called critical thinking – an essential skill that enables children to write convincingly in compositions regardless of the varied essay titles and to fully understand texts of different context in comprehension examination.

To develop critical thinking, your child must believe that thinking is fun and want to be good at it. Just like how you had practised basketball or any other sport, you get better at critical thinking with intentional practice.

2. Provide your child with opportunities to practise public speaking

A great presentation does not happen by accident. It is planned, rehearsed, then delivered with flair. Provide your child plenty of opportunities to learn and develop good presentation skills.

Public speaking is a skill, not a talent.

3. Engage your child with real world topics to expand vocabulary and improve creative writing

In educational settings across the world, there is a growing belief in using concrete, real-world problems to engage and motivate young minds to come up with innovative solutions.

Use real world events and happenings such as news articles from newspapers to engage your children.

No idea on how to close your child’s learning gap?

Let ELLoquence give you a hand!

1. ELLoquence provides necessary practices for your child to build thinking

Whether it be studying a comprehension passage or critiquing each other’s composition writings, we invite our students to be:

• CLEAR
  We challenge them to be clear by asking for explanations and examples.

• ACCURATE
  We encourage them to highlight related key facts using different colours to form connections within a text.

• RELEVANT
  We invite them to raise questions or topics that are pertinent to the discussion. 

• LOGICAL
  We think through the details of the topic from different angles, and encourage our students to make logical connections and challenge assumptions.

• FAIR
  By making sure they consider other people’s perspectives when drawing conclusions, we weave in the life-long skill of empathy into their thinking processes. 

Through consistent practices, your child will be capable of presenting facts and narrating emotions in their writing through the correct choice of words and sequence of events.

By applying critical thinking, they can learn to make inferences from the texts and explore alternatives and recognise assumptions. These skills are very useful to your child who needs to tackle higher-order thinking questions in Paper 2 of the MOE examinations.

The ELLoquence curriculum has been designed and tailored for Singapore-based students and are aligned to the Ministry of Education (MOE)’s syllabus.

2. ELLoquence gives confidence to your child to become a better speaker

At ELLoquence, we equip your child with the basic skills of making a good presentation and provide your child with ample opportunities to exercise such newly-acquired skills. 

Whether it is through a project work or sharing of research findings, we equip our students with:

• STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS
  We empower our students with the processes on how to plan and prepare a presentation.

• EMOTIONAL AWARENESS
  We help our learners become more aware of their heightened emotions, thereby reducing nervousness and fear. 

• CHARISMA
  We help your child gain rapport with their audience through a variety of techniques, including gestures, eye contact, and an appropriate use of humour.

• COMMUNICATION SKILLS
  We build on your child’s confidence by helping them to be clear about what they want to say and how they prefer to say it.

Through such intentional practice, your child will be able to deliver their thoughts and feelings clearly and convincingly, in any context. Through consistent practices, your child will be able to speak more naturally and confidently in front of unfamiliar oral examiners during the MOE examinations.

3. ELLoquence engages your child with real world learning

Students in ELLoquence can gain access to real world events and happenings, drawing on some 80 real-life themes to engage themselves. These themes range from ‘Self and Community’ (e.g. sports, friendship) to ‘Global’ (e.g. climate change, technology).

Through such a rich contextual approach, your child can pick up grammar, vocabulary and language skills much better than learning via boring textbook drills.

What is more, ELLoquence give our learners the opportunity to apply their new knowledge by participating in speaking and creative writing exercises!

Conclusion

ELLoquence English Learning Centre is confident in helping your child improves his or her language proficiency within a short period of time.

What can you do to let your child have a good head start in 2018? Let your child come onboard ELLoquence today!

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