What Would You Do in 60 Seconds?
Would you sleep just one more minute, eat a cookie, drink a bottle of milk or express a simple idea to make the world a better place? In our case, my friend, Rabia Odabaşı and I tried to make the best of a 60-seconds period to express our solution to some of the foreign language learning problems in children (with the inspiration of BBC’s Sixty Second Idea to Improve the World podcats). For this week’s assignment, we created a podcast on this issue using this free software for editing the audio file and this website to broadcast our podcast.
Since we are pre-service teachers, we wanted to find an idea that combines different theories, and approaches we have learnt until now and find an easier way to teach children a foreign language.
Teaching Through Dancing
From the beginning of our education at the university, the importance of learning in a meaningful and natural context has been emphasized continuously, contrary to the traditional, formal way we learn a foreign language in the classroom setting. Nowadays, with the help of technology, finding more fun and creative activities for easy language teaching. And one of them is teaching with the help of dancing!
The reason we chose dance as a tool for teaching a foreign language to children is that it engages children in a fun and teaching activity while helping them get rid of their excessive energy and focus!
Should We Give into This Idea?
We tried to summarize the reasons we thought teaching through dancing was a good idea in our podcast. However, I would like to draw your attention to a few more points. Idiko Pinter states in her article that both dancers and language learners struggle to convey meaning. Trying to overcome this problem through dancing helps students to feel safe and relaxed, thus, use their cognitive capacities fully to find a proper solution. In addition, we all know that feeling we get when we want to express ourselves but feel shy or insecure. When children are dancing to the music and uttering new vocabulary items, they do not feel awkward or stuck, they just sing and move with their friends and learn in a fun way.
Would the World Be a Better Place? Really?
Definitely yes! Thinking of the modern people’s problem, what stands out to me the most is the communication problems. From our daily lives to the extent of world politics, the lack of communication and having little knowledge about the communicational strategies, are the source of most of the conflicts we face. Therefore, teaching children a foreign language through dancing helps them be at ease with other cultures, other people, but, mostly with themselves!
By this method, children can gain a great command of speaking in a foreign language, as well as the other aspects of the language, and mirror their language competence to their language performance, hence, improve their communication skills. And, sure, better communication means a better world!
Feel free to check out our podcast (by clicking here) about children’s language learning through dancing. And, as the future teachers, we would like to learn your ideas about the creative and fun ways to teach children foreign languages!