After teaching English in China for over 13 years, I've seen so many students work really hard on memorizing English words, and they use all sorts of different ways, but actually only one of them helps.

And today I'm going to tell you all about it.

Now most students do one of these three things.

抄写 墨写 停写Now believe it or not, the third one, 停写, is actually the best.

But let's talk about all three of them.

So the first one is 抄写, copying.

So this way of copying words is actually the worst, because students write words just like robots.

When they repeatedly copy these words, they oftentimes don't even think about what these words mean.

They're just moving their hand.

And it feels like the focus here is on developing muscle memory.

But the problem is that this is only necessary when you're learning Chinese, when you learn how to write Chinese characters.

English does not need that.

Another reason why this is bad is that students practice and copy these words that are taken out of context.

So overall, if your goal is to help students improve vocabulary, this is a waste of time.

And if you do that, stop.

Just stop.

And the reason why this is a waste of time is because for most students, copying feels like punishment.

Now imagine every time a student misbehaves in class or doesn't listen to the teacher, the teacher is often punished them by asking students, by forcing students actually,to write words or sentences many many times over and over again on the blackboard or in their notebooks.

Now this is humiliating.

And for a lot of students, it's a disastrous way to practice or learn a language.

Even though it is simple, it is a complete waste of time.

Now let's move on to the second one.

Mosye, or recall writing.

Now recall writing is a little better because it actually forces students to actively recall words from their memory and then write them down.

That process of active recall is what pushes students to actually use the words.

But again, the problem is that just like with chao xie, most of the time the words are taken out of context.

Recall writing is when a student has to recall words from their memory and it actually can be a very painful process.

You see, students often zone out, forget the words and it becomes ineffective.

Trust me, I've seen so many students dreading this way of learning vocabulary.

And finally, let's move on to tian xie.

And here's why I think it's the best.

So one of the problems that students face, for example, when doing their KT or PT exams is that they lose points because of their inability to do well in the listening part.

Now reading is also quite a challenge, but listening for KT and PT exams is quite complicated for students because they're not used to listening to so much English.

They listen to two, three or four minute audio with so much information they simply get lost and then later struggle to recall the information.

And another reason is that they hear the audio where people speak English with different accents.

British, American, Australian.

And that is another challenge.

And so this is where our tian xie comes in.

But not just any kind of dictation.

Again, the problem with tian xie and tian xie is the fact that the words are taken out of context.

So when we do dictations, it is really important that we give students the words in context.

Writing sentences is much, much better.

Not only does it help students remember the words and the spelling, it also improves their listening comprehension.

Because they get used to hearing more English.

They get used to hearing words in context.

And they also get used to hearing how different words in one language chunk or in one sentence come together and how they sound together.

Now this way, after a few months of consistent practice, they'll be able to react to questions, to everything they hear much faster and respond to it faster.

So here is the conclusion.

If our goal is to get rid of silent English or yabai English, chaoxie, moshie and tian xie, chaoxie and moshie are not going to help with that.

Alright, and here is a bonus tip.

What's even better than a standard dictation is this.

So try while doing a dictation, encourage students to produce new language.

And here is how it works.

Imagine a standard tian xie.

But instead of just writing words or sentences, they can write questions.

So a teacher or a parent reads a question.

And what students need to do is to write down the question and then answer the question.

So they need to write down the answer.

This way they practice listening, they recall vocabulary, they practice grammar structures, they practice writing and also they produce new language when answering these questions.

And that means several skills are practiced at the same time.

So if your child struggles to remember words, has weak grammar or loses points on listening tests, this can be a real game changer.

And if you want to know more about it, welcome to my live stream every evening at 9pm.

See you there!