SUBSTITUTION DRILL FOR ANY LANGUAGE
Лексическая подстановка для любого языка

There are many different methods of teaching a foreign language advertized in internet and in some other sources but the old and reliable substitution will never be ousted by that rubbish.

Yesterday I had some practical classes with a group of cabin attendants who have to have a basic notion of aviation English and as usual there would be someone who would always complain about being quite impenetrable to any language, quite unable to learn anything and so on.

I am accustomed to such declarations and it does not irritate me but my professional curiosity urged me to challenge this problem and I defied her to learn at least 5 simple phrases in any language by using a very simple drill.

Since now we are expanding our contacts with China and have to use at least a few Chinese words, I offered a very simple drill for that cabin attendant girl in Chinese:

Ni mang ma? Are you busy? Ты занята?
Ni zhunbei ma? Are you ready? Ты готова?
Ni xingfu ma? Are you happy? Ты счастлива?
Ni zhidao ma? Do you know? Ты знаешь?
Ni mingbai ma? Do you understand? Ты понимаешь?
Ni laoshi ma? Are you a teacher? Ты преподаватель?
Ni kongjie ma? Are you a cabin attendant? Ты бортпроводник?
Ni chouyan ma? Do you smoke? Ты куришь?
Ni xuesheng ma? Are you a student? Ты студентка?
Ni xihuan ma? Do you like it? Тебе это нравится?

So after some twenty minutes that cabin girl fully acquired this magic Chinese formula NI HAO MA and even made up a few sentences of her own. She also came to her independent conclusion that Chinese is more simple in grammar than English because – oh, we can use only roots of any verbs, nouns or adjectives, she exclaimed. It is very simple and practical! I would like to learn some more phrases!

I confirmed that she was absolutely right in her conclusion and then asked her in my turn ”Do you still maintain that you are absolutely incapable to learn any foreign language? Have I convinced you that you really can really acquire some simple patterns and use them in your practice?”

It looks like she really changed her mind about her own abilities – I will ask her about this when I have my next classes.

I know from my own experience that a series of thoroughly elaborated and planned substitution exercises can replace a very thick grammar peroration book and really be efficiently conducive to better mastering of any foreign language.

Much depends on a teacher’s skill and industry in preparing some special exercises for a particular and individual professional group of students.

I devote much time to elaboration of efficient pattern exercises and place them on my site.

Teacher/trainer of Aviation English Alexander Khodovets