Hi! I’m an ALT at a junior high school. I think a lot of people can relate to this, but my students constantly rely on remembering English words using katakana English, or the pronunciation in Japanese. They also rely on what they learned in elementary school for typing on computers (hence common issues of writing “chi” as “ti” and such).
As an example, the students never spell Sunday correctly because they are thinking about it in Japanese as サンデー so they write Sandey instead.
To cut to the chase, does anyone have any tips or methods for combatting this? I accept it’s not possible to reach 100% reversal of these habits they’ve acquired, but anything helps. I have a new JTE for a first year class and she is really determined to combat this, but is at a loss as to how (as am I).
There’s a lot more context I could add but I want to keep this as simple as possible. I appreciate any advice anyone has! I don’t need a discussion about why this happens (I know, I’ve studied linguistics and I’m going to grad school for it next fall) just any methods or tips that have worked for you in helping students understand this better. Thank you!
by mt_laurel
