FAQs

Q: How does EWAS evaluate the progress of the children?
A: EWAS uses ongoing informal evaluation. Teachers informally test children after they introduce new material, when they review, when they play games and when they work activity books. Children are tested both for listening comprehension and language production in our oral-aural programs. In our reading programs, oral-aural skills are tested informally, as well as reading and writing.

Children are given a formal test when they complete every program. The criteria for the final evaluation of each child are the teacher’s personal evaluation and the results of the final test. Children are given a special EWAS certificate for successful completion of each program.

Q: How can we help our children at home? (Do the children have homework?)
A: At EWAS, the children have home practice. The teachers prepare the children in class in order for them to successfully complete home practice. The purpose of home practice is for children to review the English they have learned in class, at home. It is an opportunity for the parents to know what the children are learning and to work with the children as well. We hope parents encourage the child by showing interest in what he or she has learned.

Q: How can I know what specific material my child is studying?
A: EWAS provides a weekly plan of the curriculum. Parents can help their children at home by reviewing the stories in the storybooks and on the story CDs. Parents can also review the language by singing the EWAS songs along with their children.

Q: How do I know my child is keeping up with rest of the class?
A: Every child learns at a different pace and in different ways. At EWAS, every child will succeed at his or her individual level. Certain children will be capable of reproducing single words, other children will be able to use these words in the context of complete sentences and some exceptional children will be able to create new sentences of their own based on the language they have learned. We encourage all the children to do the best they can.

Q: How our children placed in the EWAS programs?
A: Children who have had previous experience in learning English will be given an EWAS placement test. According to the results, we place them in the correct level.

Q: Are EWAS teachers trained?
A: Yes. EWAS teachers are professionally trained to teach children.

Q: How will my child acquire a “good” accent?
A: The EWAS system teaches American English. Our foreign teachers are native-English speakers from a number of different English-speaking counties. Therefore, children are exposed to different accents of native speakers. This is very positive because in the future your children will meet people who speak English with various accents.

The singers and actors on the EWAS music and story CDs are all native speakers too. The teachers and the music and stories serve as excellent models for children to improve their accents.

Q: Why isn’t my child learning how to read?
A: The first two courses in the EWAS program (In the land of the Bears, Bobby English and the Bears) teach oral–aural English. The EWAS method gives young children a strong foundation in spoken English. This prepares them well for their first experience in reading.

Research has shown that children acquire a foreign language (L2) in much the same way as they do their mother tongue (L1). When children learn their first language, they don’t begin by reading. They begin by listening to the language around them (from their parents and grandparents and siblings). They then begin to mimic what they hear and slowly through repetition begin to speak.

When children begin reading in school they have already acquired a fairly large vocabulary. When they are taught to read, they already know the vocabulary.

Q: What distinguishes EWAS from other programs in the advanced courses?
A: EWAS takes a very unique approach to reading. We teach children the sounds they can count on and also all of the exceptions. “Context is what counts.” (The context of the word determines what sound the letter or combination of letters will have). We do not teach phonics according to the traditional rules. (English is not a phonetic language.)

EWAS has also developed a unique reading strip tool to help the reading process. Reading strips are small, “bite-size” pieces of the text of the story. Reading strips are an intermediate step before children have to cope with the entire text. These small pieces give children confidence and prepares them for success with reading.

Q: Will my child be able to speak English fluently at the end of all the EWAS courses?
A: Yes, without a doubt. Communication and language production are our main goals. In the EWAS system, children receive two full years of spoken English. In the more advanced courses, the children learn reading and writing skills but oral-aural English is emphasized.

Q: What does EWAS teach in each course?
In the Land of the Bears
• Concepts: family | waking up in the morning and breakfast | the child’s room | toys, kindergarten activities | playing outside | travel downtown | shopping | playing in the park | the zoo | activities at home

• Language and grammar: present simple, present progressive, questions and statements | “wh” questions, yes/no questions | singular and plural form of words | contractions | time, possessive, negative, using articles | string sentences, simple sentences, sentences with compound subjects

• Reading: identifying upper and lower case letters of the alphabet | sounding out letters and combinations of letters (phonics) | learning that the same letters or combinations of letters can make different sounds and that different letters and combinations of letters can make the same sound | reading words globally | reading words phonetically | reading phrases | reading sentences | reading paragraphs | reading and entire story book

• Writing: letter formation | copying words | writing words | phrases | sentences and writing structured short stories

Q: Does EWAS teach grammar?
A: We teach many grammatical structures in the EWAS programs in the context of meaningful stories. We practice these grammatical structures through EWAS repetition techniques, through our songs, games, “acting it out” and activities in the activity books. We do not teach rules of grammar that have no practical application. Young children learn the syntax and grammar of English by using the language rather than learning rules that they cannot understand.

Q: How does EWAS meet the standards of the Chinese Ministry of Education?
A: The new standard of the Chinese Ministry of Education requires that children have a vocabulary between 600 to 700 words when they complete elementary school. At the end of the EWAS courses (roughly 6th grade, the end of the elementary school) students will learn more than 3,000 words — the standard requirement for students completing high school!

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