Personal pronouns - "I" vs "YOU"

[sesse]

How to teach personal pronouns "I" and "you". One of my students (a student I tutor one-on-one) struggles with the concept of you and I. I've never found any trouble teaching this, I usually just point at myself and the student and they "get it", but this student (who has some learning difficulties) has trouble with this. I've given him the word in his native language, pointed to him and me saying sentences but I still struggle with situations like this:

I will point to myself and say "I am", then point to him and say "You are", but he keeps saying "You are... " to talk about himself... I often just correct him and try to explain the rule (in his language) and he replies correctly at first, but he still has problems with this.

[Lingo]

Hi sesse,

This is a difficult one! I experienced the very same problem with my 2-year old, and I never found the solution. It just took some time for him to get it.

How old is your student? I'm assuming that despite any learning difficulties he may have, he probably has better self-awareness than a 2-year old.

Have you tried a more visual approach? What if you got photos of yourself and him and stick them on to magnets. Pop them on the white board and draw speech bubbles. Then you could use the visual clues to try to get through to him, and hopefully he can make the connection.

[rishisehrawat]

Hi,

I faced this problem with one of my student too. He was a Japanese and I don't know japanese much. So, what I did was give him a list of sentences which he would use for himself. For example a daily routine. I woke up at 6:00 am, I brushed my teeth, I went to the gym... and so on... (make sure that it is his daily routine... and there are a lot of sentences that he can relate to.
Then ask him to talk about yourself.... ask him to describe yourself and write down his sentences.

Make sure that you repeat the following with him for a long time. There is no short-cut to this.