There’s a TV commercial in Japan by a house-building company called ‘Daiwa House’ in which an English teacher is reading sentences for his class of high school students to repeat. I can’t remember exactly but he says something like “My father is a doctor”, and all the students diligently repeat him. Then, following the same rules of grammar, he says “My mother is a teacher”, and once again they all repeat. Finally, he says “My house is a Daiwa house”, and he’s greeted by lots of blank faces.
Okay, it’s not particularly funny, but it’s typical of Japanese students to learn English through repetition drills such as the one he used. Generally I find the kids I teach are pretty useless when it comes to making sentences for themselves, and repetition is the most direct way to get the kids to speak English. Hopefully, over time, the language patterns will be so embedded in their brains that they will be able to fall back on their ‘database’ of  rote-learned phrases and produce something of their own.
When I visit kindergartens, I always have the children repeat me, and since I’ve been teaching for a while now, they do it automatically. Unfortunately, many of them do it without having the faintest clue what they are saying. So I like to amuse myself by saying silly things to shake them out of auto-repeat mode.
“I’m fine! I’m fine! I’m fine! I’m a banana!”
“I’m five years old! I’m five years old! I’m two years old!”
A couple of weeks ago I did the ‘Daiwa House’ test:
“Hi! Hi! Hi! Hello! Hello! Hello! Good morning! Good morning! Good morning! My house is a Daiwa house!”
It worked better than on the TV commercial! I had half of the 30 children repeat it pretty well, while the other half mumbled something along the lines of “My how is a hi are how”. Their regular Japanese teacher who watches from the sidelines was cracking up with laughter – she had obviously seen the commercial – while I laughed it off and moved on with the lesson…
Two weeks later on my next visit and the kids rushed out of the classroom to greet me screaming “MY HOUSE IS A DAIWA HOUSE!!!”. That totally blew me away!
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