The Alternative Story

Hi parents,

English Language as with most languages is best learnt through
immersion. By immersing a child in a language (through reading
and also listening to the language being spoken), a child
picks up the language naturally and much more easily.

However, not every child is able to do so. Many children need
help with their grammar, with their understanding of
a text, with their oral expression and so on.

Hence, we feel that it is necessary for some kids to be
immersed in the English Language as much as possible for
them to really begin to pick up the finer details of the language.

While we have our regular classes to help children, we find that
some children still need extra help with their work because
a 2 hour lesson, while it is good for drilling and
teaching concepts and strategies, cannot really immerse
a child in the language. The 2 hour lesson focuses on getting
the children to know how to be able to tackle the questions in
the examination. This lesson is more to immerse the child in
the language so he picks it up naturally.

Therefore, we have come up with this class where we will
cover a range of components (grammar, comprehension, synthesis,
spelling, speech & drama and vocabulary). However the way
we teach these components will be in 2 ways:

1) By immersion
2) By picking up the rules, explaining them and practising
similar questions

What do we mean?

We will be using storybooks as our guide. As the children
read the books with us, we will pick up certain grammatical
structures from the passage and teach them the rules and then
we will have practices on the rule. When we come
across a synonym of a word in the book eg "jubilant", we
will teach the children other synonyms of the word and teach
them the mnemonics so they can easily remember the words.

When we come across a certain synthesis structure in the passage,
we will also pull that out and teach them the rules and give them
practices to work on.

We will also set comprehension passages based on the book
and teach them how to be able to find the answers as they
read. In this way, they can also learn English in a more
natural way.

For the speech and drama part, we will cover the following
components:

1) Intonation (How to read with expression)

2) Pronunciation (How to pronounce the words correctly,
especially the ability to pronounce 'th' and the ability to
differentiate between their 't's and 'd's for eg.)

3) Linking of ideas (How to link ideas together, we will
teach them how to have a topic sentence and how to develop the
topic by giving a macro view point and then provide the
micro details and also teach them how to wrap up their topic)

4) Creative thinking (We will teach them how to act out a
scene using for eg. a chair in different ways. The chair could be a
time machine, it could be a seat in the classroom, it could be
the back of a horse, and they are supposed to act out
different scenarios and to think of how they can use the same
object to portray different scenarios)

5) Newscaster (We will also get them to listen to the
news broadcast on the internet and then they would have to do
their own broadcast)

However in order to allow the child to be immerse in such an
environment, the programme would need to be longer.

This class is an added support to what we teach in our normal
classes. However, for students who are not in our normal
classes, this class would be good for immersing them
in the English Language.

Details of the class:

Name of Class: English Immersion Class (EIC)

Time and day of class: 3- 7 pm, Tuesday (it is 4 hours
long but there will be a 15 min break in between and the children
will not feel restless as the speech and drama part is very
lively and the learning through reading is not intensive
drilling)

Venue: Ang Mo Kio centre

Price:
*Although this is a 4 hour programme, we are actually
charging the same price as our 2 hour programme for TAS
students (This is done so that this programme can really
be a support for your child and help your child pick up the Language
fast)

So for TAS students, it is $388 per term.

For non-TAS parents, there is also a 40% discount,
instead of it being $776 (our normal price for a 4 hour lesson),
it will be $465 per term.

This price will remain until the end of the year (2011) as part of
our promotion.


How to register:

- You can email us at thealternativestory@gmail.com and give
us the following particulars:

1) Full name of child
2) Level of child (P1 for eg.)
3) Full name of parent
4) Handphone number of parent

Once we have 4 students of the same level, we will start a class
and inform you.

TAS