2.1 Some Pertinent Ideas
2.1.15 Seven Rules
1. The first rules: Learn English Phrase, Not Individual Words
A.J Hoge stated that when a student has the word “hate” and he wants to learn this word, he can write down the word hate finds in from dictionary
33 Zare, P. (2012). Language learning strategies among EFL/ESL learners: A review of literature.
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, p. 162-169.
the meaning and the memorize it “hate” that’s the old way, that’s the kind of text book way. In school, most of students remember many individual words. They have vocabulary list then try to memorize all them. It is not good way to learn. According to A.J Hoge, it is much better if the students learn the phrase, a group of words than a list word only. He suggests that when the students listen or read very English they should write down. However, they do not write down just that word. They should write down whole phrase or part of sentence. A.J Hoge said phrase give us a lot of information.
The first, phrase is easy to remember because they have meaning. They have kind of a picture of a story. Especially when students get them from something that they are reading or listening to. The second, when the students learn phrases, they learn grammar. They learn how to use that word correctly.
2. The second rule: Do Not Study Grammar Rules.
The second rules are a surprise for many people. Rule number two is do not study grammar rules. A.J.Hoge said
“When you focus on grammar rules, you focus on analyzing English. For writing English, that’s Okay. Why? Because when you write English you have time, you can erase your mistake. You do not need to write fast. However, for speaking, there is no time. You do not have time to think about rules. If someone asks you a question, you must answer immediately.”A.J Hoge concludes that the best way to learn English Grammar is tough input. Another word, English comes in mostly through listening. Reading is also good but specially for easy English book, easy novels.
3. The third rule: learn with Your Ears, Not with Your Eyes.
Course that focuses exclusively on listening skills can be quite effective, and some program has a curriculum that necessitates a class devoted solely to listening.34 Other programs pair listening and speaking. That is also appropriate because much of the time when we use language naturally, we pair listening and speaking. We are sometimes the listener and sometime. In addition, all shows the same thing. Listener the speaker.
A.J Hoge said if the learners want to speak excellent English, they have to learn with their ears; listening. It is key to have excellent English speaking. It is most important thing. Because if they listen a lot, they will learn vocabulary and grammar. They will get faster and understand better. There is a lot research about this. And all shows the same thing. Listening the most important thing, we can do. Therefore, this tells us one reason why someone probably has some trouble with his speaking, because when he learned English in school, middle school, high school, university, private English schools, most of them focus on textbooks in the classroom.
Another most important to consider more specific is about what to listen.
Because it is important how we listen and what we listen too. The most important thing is we must listen easy to easy English. We should understand 95% or more, without stopping, without a dictionary. That’s quite easy because we want to listen easy English listening. We can get an audio article or speech.
Or a lesson even. And we have the text so, we can read and listen at the same time. But listen is the most important thing.
4. The fourth rule: Deep Learning
A.J. Hoge defined that deep learning means repeating what we learn again and many times. Not just, learn and move to another material without understanding fully about the material. But in normal school most of school have a lot of pressure to go fast and fast. They are always pushing the students
34Brown Streven, (2006). Teaching Listening. Cambridge University Press Echols, John M., Shadily, Hasan. (1992). An Indonesia English Dictionary.
to learn more vocabulary, more grammar rules, every week. One of the reasons is the teacher should finish textbook very quickly.
Students learn deeply means that they need to slow down and repeat everything they learn many times to make them understand. For example, if they have an audio article or podcast, they should not just listen one time. One tie is not enough, five times are not enough. They should listen to article, the speech thirty times, fifty times, one hundred time or more. Even after they know the vocabulary, they are suggested to keep listen the same thing. Because, knowing the vocabulary, just means that they can say the meaning. But when they hear it, they will instantly understand it and use it quickly and easily and automatically. They need to listen to that same word, phrase, sentence, and article, lesson many times.
5. The fifth rule: Point of View Mini Stories
Point of view mini stories is away to teach students to speak correctly and grammatically. Even seven rules suggest focusing intensively on listening and speaking; the only different from another ways studying grammar is that in point of view mini stories the students will never be given grammar rules in written instead of in telling mini stories in different time; present, continuous, perfect, future, and past time.
Here is a simple procedure in teaching point of view mini stories. When the teacher teaches point of view mini stories, he teaches a funny or short little story. The first, he teaches it in present, it has happened now. For example, there is a boy. His name is bill. Bill goes to the store. He buys a bottle of water. He pays two dollars for the water. That was in the present. In addition, all the students need to do, just listen to it. Listen, and listen again, deep learning remembers. They should repeat it many times. How do they learn grammar from the story? They have the same story but now it is the past. There was a boy named Bill. Yesterday, he went to the store. He bought a bottle of water. He paid two dollars of the water. They have the present and the past. They should listen the story in the past many time. The next they are suggested to listen the same story in future, perfect and so on.
6. The sixth rule: use real English materials
Real English materials are related to the subject or thing that mostly native speakers listen to, watch or read in their daily life. In this rule, the students are suggested to listen the real English material or watch the movie and audio-visual material that native watch. Audio books are another great way to practice listening. An audio book is just a book that someone is reading and they are recorded, so instead of reading the book, we listen to the book.
This is the procedure in learning this rule: the first, the students should listen to easy English, about topics that they enjoy. They should enjoy the speaker, their voice, their energy, and the topics. The second, the students should choose audio books that are easy. They may need to start with children’s storybooks. Third, when their level is higher, they can listen to audio book for young adults or for older children then they just keep listening, when it is too easy then they may choose something a little more difficult and should repeat many times.
7. The seventh rule: Use Listen and Answer Mini Stories
Listen-and-answer mini stories are special kind of stories where the teacher “asks” a story. The teacher asks a lot of very simple and easy question then the students use these listen and answer stories, they teach their selves to understand and respond quickly, and automatically. That is why these are powerful. They learn to think in English and they learn to speak quickly, without thinking, without translating.