I teach Chinese at an international middle school, and before and after school class at lower school as well. I just found out about WBT 3 days ago. I watched all the videos…some of them twice. Read through the “first steps” and several other documents. I am excited because I know WBT would work well in a foreign language classroom because the extensive used of gestures which matches the methodology of TRP instruction.

However, it will be challenged for me to incorporate WBT and stay in the target language at the same time (meaning without speaking a whole lot of English to explain)… because it requires constant communicating between the teacher and students. I would like to know...
Is there any foreign language teacher adapting WBT in your class, especially a beginner’s class?
How do you modify these techniques in order to stay in the target language as much as possible?
Which way do you think it would work better: introducing WBT ASAP and use it as part of the language learning material? Or save it for later, after students are comfortable with the new language?

Any suggestion will be much appreciated!

Can I ask a question? Is the target language Chinese or English? Sorry it may sound silly but I read your post a couple of times and still couldn't figure it out. However, here is my suggestion:

I teach in a dual-language school. That means half day the students are taught in Spanish and the other half of the day the students are taught in English. The Spanish only teacher teaches everything in Spanish. She has adapted everything and put it in Spanish, using the same pictures. For instance, she says "Clase! Clase! and the students answer "Mande! Mande" The visuals, modeling and acting out of each of the rules, procedures, etc. helps the English only students.

And Vice Versa: The English only teacher teaches everything in English, but the visuals, modeling and practicing helps the Spanish only students.

Does this help at all or did I misunderstand your question?

Hi Andrea,

Sorry I didn't make myself clear enough in my message...(a clue that I am not a English teacher

I teach Chinese as a foreign language to K-8 students at 3 different schools. One one of them is a dual-language school, a K-8 French American school. It would be great if any one of the English or French teachers would also pick up WBT. So I don't need to explain everything in English first. However, I might need to teach the Chinese language of all the terms (class/yes, teach/ok, scoreboard..) used in WBT first. Wait until they know understand these terms in Chinese well enough, and then run the system.

My guess is it will be a slow process in the beginning because of the language. I just am not confident since WBT is entirely new to me.

Thank you!

WOW! Actually it sounds like you've got a great remedy to me! I would encourage you to change the Classroom Management picture cards to Chinese. If it is hard for the students to read, you may want to add a "phonetic" spelling beneath. I think once you have explained what they are doing in English you should very quickly switch to Chinese. I think they will learn the language much more quickly, but I am also thinking of if these students were going to school in China--what would they experience? They would have to learn it in the native language. And this is the same situation for my non-English speaking students. I do not speak Spanish so I do not translate. What is amazing is how quickly they catch on!!! The gestures and hand motions make it so easy to catch on! Be patient--with your students but especially with yourself. You are right--this is new for you so it may take a bit of tweaking it to work out all the details. But once you see the response--you will be glad that you stuck to it! Trust me--I was a hesitant first year teacher AND first year WBT teacher. I was totally frightened!!! But out of all the things I used on the first day--all of the WBT strategies worked the best and I can honestly say that it was the great success I saw that drove me towards full implementation! Good luck and keep us updated!

Hi! My situation is nearly the exact opposite in regards to language teaching.

I teach native Chinese speakers English as a foreign language in Taiwan (and, well, I'm teaching college and not kindergarten).

I've been speaking Chinese as my second language for 12 years now and am quite fluent.

So, I'm really interested to see how things are going in your Chinese classroom.

Are you using "同學" (tong xue) instead of "class"? What is their reply?

The other thing that will be slightly different in a Chinese application is the use of tones . . . I know you can play with language and make different funny sounds with a tonal language, but it will just be different.

Anywho, just wondering how you are doing a few weeks in . . .