How to teach geographical and street locations to foreign language students.
What does a teacher do when students point out a discrepancy on a map? Funny thing happened in the school one day when my small Korean group pointed out that what is called the Sea of Japan should be called Sea of Korea. Was I there to test their cognitive skills? In my mind I have seen the Sea of Japan for years and years, realizing that it could be called Sea of Korea on the other side of the world. I wanted to diffuse any argument that might arise although their ability to use sufficient words to argue a case about what names should be there in English seemed to be limited. But never underestimate the beginner to argue with even the few words that he has cause when I rebutted no that says Sea of Japan, I got a quick answers: No, it's Sea of Korea and then bad map. I just wanted to entertain them with the thought that it doesn't matter to me what the damn sea is called as long as they know where it is because names and locations go together in English and in Geography. But I settled with some other pointers.
' Look,' I said. "See the name Greenland. It"s not green its white' and I began to pretend to shiver. They liked that although it wouldn't quell any nationalistic spirit if they were at odds with perhaps old rivalries in that region. Then I pointed to the sea south of South Korea and said "Look. South Korean Sea?" It's south of South Korea I pointed out but it's called the South China Sea.
So when talking about geography it helps to have a map, if not a simple one drawn in class will comfort a foreign student who has difficulty expressing their location in reference to their mother country. Here is where you can slap on time zones and teach time in relation to countries if you want to digress or introduce cardinal points and talk about your country's position in reference to another one.
My students had difficulty relating their location. It appeared that they needed prepositions to link the information together. This is to be expected especially when the first lessons concentrate on nouns, verbs and subjects. Now when the student had difficulty to know what "on" was I simply recalled demonstrating by moving a pencil to different positions in space. That together with drawing visuals of locations and where they are in relation to a fixed reference like the school helped. When common sense prevails, breaking down the problem into smaller parts is the best solution. So talking about a location can be divided into going to one street corner then turning it to go down an adjacent street until the location is found.
