Our Jolly Phonics and Genki English Preparatory Course is designed for children with little or no English experience.

Jolly Phonics builds a thorough foundation for reading and writing in English and uses the synthetic phonics method, which means that the letter sounds are taught first, on their own, and children are then taught to blend sounds together to say (‘synthesize’) the word.

With Jolly Phonics the children develop the five basic skills for reading and writing:

• Learning the letter sounds
• Learning letter formation
• Blending
• Identifying sounds in words
• Spelling the tricky words

Each sound is taught with an action, which helps children remember the letter(s) that represent it.

As a child becomes more confident, the actions are no longer necessary.
Alongside these skills the children are introduced to the main alternative spellings and tricky words increasing reading fluency.

Once a child has begun to learn the letter sounds they will be able to pick them out in words. They should then move on to working out whole words through blending. It is easier if reading begins with storybooks that use simple regular words. Such words are easily read from the ‘code’ of writing and so are described as ‘decodable storybooks’. The Jolly Phonics Readers are an example of such storybooks.

Children’s achievement in the Phonics Stage Independent studies find that, after one year’s teaching, children taught with Jolly Phonics have an average reading age around 12 months ahead of their actual age. For spelling the gain is usually slightly more. In addition, it is typical for all children to do well, whatever their social background, and whether English is their first language or not, with boys doing as well as girls.

The Genki approach to learning English works by engaging all of the learners senses and appealing to a wide range of learning styles. Children are engaged visually through the simple but striking graphics, aurally/orally through the simple chants and songs and limited amounts of graded vocabulary input and kinesthetically through the actions and games.

Because all of the learning tasks are organized as game-like activities, children are immediately motivated to take part. Tasks are achievable and learners receive positive feedback throughout the learning process. It is important that teachers realize that just using the materials is not enough, the way the materials are used are just as important to fully engage learners and maximize learning.

Fees