The PET Mailbox

Dear editor and colleagues,
    Greetings from Uvs Aimag. My name is Bayartai. I am a foreign language teacher at the “New Future” complex school of Ulaangom. I have been teaching English for 12 years.
    First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to all staff of the English Language Institute Mongolia for their great support and contribution to the development of English language teaching in Mongolia. In 1994, I completed a one-year course from ELI.  We English teachers of UVS aimag had the chance to practice our language skills with native English speakers from ELI from 1996 till 1998. Now we have teachers from English Language Institute again.
    Thank you for sending us our wonderful EXCEL supervisor Ms. Karey Fishburn, and the Dougherty family. We have had three seminars with them. I really improved my English. Our EXCEL students have already done many homework assignments. Also I received the PET Journal. The journal is a valuable present for me because there are many interesting ideas and much useful information.
    I want to share my little idea on vocabulary and student memorization. I try to teach my 6th graders one poem each week.  I write the poem on the chalkboard.  We read it all together three times. Then I erase the words leaving only the first letter of each word in the poem. The first letters help my students to memorize the poetry. They like the activity.  I think it is a useful way for them to memorize poems, improve their reading skills, and enrich their vocabulary.

For example, I taught this poem:
On Monday I play football
On Tuesday I play basketball
On Wednesday I go roller–skating
On Thursday I do my exercises
On Friday I go swimming
On Saturday I play golf
On Sunday we play tennis.

  1. I wrote it on the chalkboard.
  2. I read it clearly as an example.
  3. My students read it three times.
  4. I erased the words leaving only the first letter of each word.
  5. We all read the poem together looking at the letters.
  6. My students tried to read in groups.
  7. My students read the poem one-by-one.

Here are three other poems I have taught recently:
 
The Children of the World

I am Mongolian
You are Canadian
She is Brazilian
And he is Russian
    My name is Dorj
    Your name is George
    Her name is Sophia
    His name is Koloy.
I am from Ulaanbaatar
You are from Ottava
She is from Brasilia
He is from Moscow
    We live far away from each other
    But we are children of the world
 
 
She is My Best Friend

She is my best friend
We are always side-by-side
We tell each other everything
Best friends have nothing to hide
She likes to dance
I like to run
What ever we are doing
We have a lot of fun
Her favorite food is mutton
And mine is cheese
We share our sweets together
And we always say please
 
 
My Dog

I walk my dog
All over the place
When we get home
He licks my face
He runs fast
And I run slow 
He is always with me
Where ever I go
My dog is like my shadow
He stays by my side
I tell him all my secrets
In him I can confide