Introduction
Communication skills help children express their thoughts, emotions, and ideas more clearly. No matter what profession a child wants to venture into, communication skills serve as a foundational step for the child to have a successful future. They also help in building more positive relations with others and making wise decisions.
English is a global language that helps people from different parts of the world interact with each other. Teaching kids how to speak and write in English can enhance their confidence and ability to express themselves more clearly. It equips them with the opportunity to interact with people from all over the world and work collectively to make a change. Parents can introduce a lot of adaptive and diverse learning activities that may help a child learn English faster and more accurately.
Creative English Activities for Students to Improve Language Skills
Here is a list of some practical yet highly interesting English activities that parents may consider working on their child's language skills.
Flashcards
To play this game, parents may get some printed flashcards displaying words, such as apple, strawberry, bus, and game. Now you may show each of these flashcards one by one to your child and ask them to frame a sentence including that word. As you proceed, show them more flashcards and they will have to keep on making up sentences for each word shown. This is a game that helps kids improve their communication skills and their ability to think and translate their thoughts from their native language to English spontaneously. With time, instead of just words, you may also start adding phrases.
Charade
A game of charades is not just fun but a highly interactive activity that focuses on improving a child's communication skills. It also helps in creating a light-hearted environment where the child indulges in non-verbal communication by guessing through the enactment of another person. Don't limit the game of charades to just guessing movies. You may simply divide all the participants into two groups and each of them should be given a phrase or a word that they will have to act on for the other team members to guess. This way, the child can work on their vocabulary while working in a team.
Journaling
Journalling is a great opportunity for the child to reflect on their thoughts and write down their experiences on a piece of paper. It's also a safe space for the child to truly introspect their feelings without fear of judgment. An additional benefit of regular journalling is that the child develops a habit of writing every day. Continuous self-expression through writing allows the child to work on the grammatical structure and build vocabulary. Journalism may also prompt a greater inclination towards reading. Parents can play a significant role by encouraging the child to journal regularly.
Audio & Visual Content
Kids are active learners and observers and may learn a lot from movies, shows, podcasts, and even cartoons. Exposing kids to the right kind of content which is appropriate as per their age can help in developing a deeper understanding of English. It can also massively expand their vocabulary as the kid not only learns new words but also how to use them while communicating regularly. Making your child watch English programs and movies may also significantly improve their pronunciation and grammatical concepts.
Repeat After Game
‘Repeating after me’ is a game in which parents encourage the child to replicate what they have just said. It can be a word, a phrase, or a whole paragraph. Repeating what the parent had said may help in embedding the information in the child's brain for a longer time. It can also facilitate a clear understanding of the pronunciation of each word. This is a more traditional method of learning but is highly indulgent and effective. Parents can make it more fun by making the child learn new words and phrases through the aid of poems and songs.
Picture Description
Picture description is an activity in which a child is given a reference picture. Looking at the reference picture, the child has to form sentences describing what's happening in the picture. Parents may give a lively picture of a zoo, market, playground, tourist place, or anything that they feel is appropriate. The activity requires the child to use different types of adjectives, nouns, and adverbs to describe the events happening in the picture. The child also has to carefully analyze everything before structuring the sentences. Parents must provide analytical feedback by the end of the activity to improve the performance of the child.
Conclusion
The key to developing strong communication skills in English among children is by introducing new activities from time to time. This makes learning more enthusiastic for the child. Also, different types of activities push the kids to come out of their comfort zone and work on language building through effective strategies.
Reference Articles
The views expressed are that of the expert alone.
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