How To Teach Children English

Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A.J. Hogue, where A.J. 's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all, without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills. Here's A.J.

with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly. Hi, I'm A.J. Hogue, the author of Effortless English, Learn to Speak English Like a Native.

For a free text transcript of this video and all of my shows, go to EffortlessEnglishClub.com. Go to the blog. EffortlessEnglishClub.com. Blog free transcripts.

In my last show, I talked about teaching your children English. I'm going to give you the hard... ugly truth in today's show. The hard, ugly truth about education and the school system.

Some people, especially teachers, will not like what I'm going to say. But it's the hard truth. I promise to give you the truth as I know it. So I have to say this.

I feel I must say this. Now, I told you some techniques for teaching your children English. Let me just say, you, you, you, you are the best teacher for your children. For all subjects.

All of it. Not some employee teacher in a school. You are the best teacher for your child. Nobody can beat you as a teacher. See, so many parents, they're afraid to teach their children.

I don't know why. But when I talk about homeschooling, when I talk about teaching your child English... Many, many, many parents, they say the same things to me. Oh, I don't know.

I can't do that. My English isn't good enough. I don't know how to teach. I was not good in school myself. Oh, you know, the teachers at school are professionals.

There's a lack of confidence, not... enough confidence for a lot of parents. They're afraid. They're afraid to teach their own children. And this fear is a kind of brainwashing, propaganda and brainwashing from the media and from the school systems, from the government and the school systems.

See, they want you to be afraid to teach your children. They want you to think that The teachers at school are professional and they're doing a fantastic job and you can't do it.

And that's a lie. School is a lie. The school system is a big lie. Think about it. You send your child to a class. That child is in a big class with other kids.

They're not alone. It's not one-on-one. In their class, there are probably 20 children. That's a small class. But more likely, probably 30 or more children in that same class.

And just one teacher... If you're lucky, they might have a teaching assistant. But really, one main adult teacher for 20 or 30 or more children. How much individual teaching time does your child get at school?

What do you think? How much time does the teacher focus on your child only? Maybe your child has a problem or is struggling with something or needs some help. How much time do you think your child gets each day, individually, one-on-one?

Well, I'll tell you, it's less than 10 minutes a day. Most days, it's probably zero. Maybe five minutes. Ten minutes at most. And this is just not because the teacher is evil, no.

Because the teacher has 20 children. It's impossible for the teacher to give individual attention to each kid every day. Can't do it. And certainly can't give a lot.

Point number two. Which kids do you think in school get the most attention from the teacher? Individual attention. The bad kids. And by bad, I mean the misbehaving kids.

The kids who are running around, making a lot of noise, causing trouble, basically. But there's nothing wrong with those children. In fact, I understand why the kids are bored.

It's natural because they don't want to just sit on their butts all day. The point is, what happens is that most teachers, they spend a lot of their time, especially their individual focus, on discipline, not teaching. They're not focused on teaching, giving each child individual teaching attention. No, they're focused on discipline.

Sit down, be quiet. I told you to do that. That's what a lot of their individual focus is for in a school. Come on, remember yourself. Think back. Well, it's much, much worse now, I promise you.

Schools have gotten worse, worse, worse. You know, every decade they get worse. When I was in school, they were already bad. Now they are far, far worse.

This is the simple truth. Here's the truth. You teaching your own kid will always be better just because you are focused on them. Even if you have three children, that's only three kids.

You can give each one a lot of individual attention. In two hours a day, just two hours a day, you will give them far, far, far more teaching. than they get in a whole week at school or even a whole month.

Also, because they're your children, discipline should be less of a problem, right? You should already have that solved as a parent. They should listen to you. They should respect you.

And if they don't, you need to figure that out because that's a bigger parenting issue. But they should pretty much respect you. So you don't need hours and hours a day. We send kids to schools six hours a day or more.

Do we really need that? No, it's because the school system sucks. It's no good. They're not teaching enough. that are wasting and wasting and wasting hours and hours and hours a day on stupid worksheets and discipline and all these other problems.

The actual real teaching is very, very small each day. Six hours is not required. If you really do it well, two hours a day is enough for formal academic teaching for young children.

So I'm saying under middle school, like under 13 years of age, they only need two, three hours a day, that's all. The younger they are, the less they need.

The truth is, even if you were bad in school, even if your English is not very good, you will be much, much, much more effective than any employee at a school.

And this is not only for English, it's true for all subjects. And it's true for all ages. Schools are a lie. They try to make you afraid. Oh, I can't do it.

But you know what? Those teachers, they're not doing anything special. Mostly what teachers are doing in schools is trying to keep all the kids in their seat at the same time, fairly quiet,

Behaving well. That's what a lot of energy goes towards. That's the focus for the teaching day for most teachers. Discipline, not instruction. The actual techniques they use for instruction are terrible.

textbooks, little worksheets. The kids are just doing busy work. It's just to keep them busy and quiet. A lot of the work they do is not actually helping them learn faster, not helping them create real useful skills.

No, it's just to keep them busy. The true skills are reading, reading, writing, being able to speak well, talk about ideas. These are the main skills of independent learning that your child needs for all their life. They're simple to teach.

Teaching reading is easy. It's so easy. It's simple. It's not a hard skill. Once a child reaches seven, eight, nine years old, they can learn to read very quickly and easily.

Writing is more difficult. It takes time, but you just do it little by little. It mostly comes from reading, by the way. The more your child reads, the better they will write.

So, reading is really the central skill. Get your child to love, love, love reading. Now, for English, of course, you're going to be working on listening and speaking first.

But in your own language, other subjects, reading, reading, reading, reading, reading. A child that reads well can learn by themselves. They don't need a teacher for most things.

And again, math. What kind of math, mathematics do children need? Well, until high school level, just basic stuff. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, fractions, decimals, a few things like that.

It's not that hard. Okay? You can figure it out. You can figure out how to teach your child. When they get older, if you think they need geometry, advanced algebra, even calculus or something, just hire a tutor.

Hire a private tutor. You can come to your house, you know, a couple times a week and teach your child one-on-one, one-on-one. If you have a one-on-one tutor, a private tutor like that, you only need a few hours a week. So it actually wouldn't be that expensive.

Because there's so much online that your child can also learn from in between. So the tutor is just there. The private tutor is just there to explain things and answer questions from your child. Your child first would learn, let's say math.

Let's say advanced math, okay? Let's say calculus. They could go to a website like Khan Academy, which is free, by the way. And they could take the course.

And they're going to be going through the course. They're going to be learning a lot of it themselves. All by themselves, independently. But occasionally they will reach points where they don't understand something and they need some help.

So that's when you have a private tutor. You could even get one on Skype or have them come to your house. Just once a week, probably enough. And your child just asks questions.

I don't understand. I don't understand this problem. I don't understand this idea. And then the tutor can work with them until they understand. Then, the rest of the week, they're just doing problems, doing work.

independently. And this math is probably the most difficult. All the other subjects are easy. History is just reading. History is so easy. It's just reading.

Read books about history. Easy. Literature. Just read. Read, read, read. That's the core skill for most academics. So you are the best teacher for your child.

You and no one else. Certainly not some school system, some big bureaucracy, some employee who does not love your child. A lot, I won't say all, but a lot of teachers who work in schools, they're not the smartest people in the world. They're not so smart.

They were not so good in school themselves. They're not so motivated. A lot of them are kind of low energy and burned out. Yeah, occasionally you find some good ones, but you also find a lot of bad ones.

And none of them are as good as you. Trust yourself. Teach your own children. Okay, the government cannot replace you. The government cannot be the parent of your child and the government cannot be their number one teacher.

Only you can do this. That is the hard truth. That is your responsibility. But it is also your opportunity. You. You, you, you are the ultimate, the best teacher for your children.

So just do it. Okay? Enough of the fear. Teach your children. Alright. Go to EffortlessEnglishClub.com for a free text guide of this show and all my other shows.

Go to the blog, effortlessenglishclub.com.