Inspirational English, May 2017 Inspirational English, May 2017 | Page 7

Continued from previous page
You often use "Role plays" in class. Do you believe it
is the best way to engage shy learners?
This is definitely one of the ways to engage
shy learners but before introducing “role playing” or other
pair or group work activities to the class someone needs to
consider the following:
Shy or reluctant students usually have a high level of
intrapersonal skills, that is, they are able to hear and
analyse their own thoughts but a low level of interpersonal
skills, skills that enable someone to communicate and
interact successfully with other people. It is therefore
important to build a positive and safe class environment
where all students can speak without fear of judgement or
embarrassment and where everyone respects each other’s
views. For me, this is an important step before asking my
students to take part in role playing or other form of
activities where interpersonal skills are in order.
You have created your own system of "Jolly
Phonics". Tell us a little bit more about it, please,
and why you encourage teachers to use it.
I kind of like that… “my own system of Jolly Phonics” because that’s what it is exactly… Jolly Phonics is a method created
by Sue Lloyd more than 30 years ago and it aims at teaching literacy skills to English native learners. Since the majority of
my learners are not English native speakers, several adaptations needed to be made to meet the needs of my non- native
audience. Jolly Phonics is a highly multisensory approach to teaching literacy. Every sound is taught with an action and the
action helps children remember that sound. Strong visuals and auditory aids support the whole learning process and it is
incredible how quickly children start to read and write. Despite the adaptations I brought to the programme I always apply
its principles as they are key to unlocking the foundational skills of reading and writing. I did try in the past several other
approaches to teaching literacy but none of them yielded the results of Jolly Phonics. With Jolly Phonics children can read
effortlessly, can decode unknown words and because of that we can introduce books to them earlier. This means higher
exposure to the target language… and as Dr. Seuss said, “The more books that you read, the more things you will know.
The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go”. I am a strong supporter of extensive reading as it increases children’s
vocabulary and understanding and embeds the structures of the language. Therefore, I
encourage all teachers to use Jolly Phonics in their
classes – it’s fun, it’s multisensory and most of all it
provides strong foundations for reading and writing.
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