My purpose this summer is to help a 10-year-old boy learn English!

What is the best way to do this? Anyone have any tips?

My approach is to constantly speak to him in English and ask questions for him to answer.
Do children really learn languages well if they hear it being spoken and are encouraged to speak it, too?

I think the plan that you have is one of the best ways to go about it. I know when I was learning spanish, it was more effective to me when my teacher spoke all in spanish and we had to respond all in spanish, no matter what. Really made us WANT to learn! lol.

play well known games that he should already know, I realize that at his age this will be harder then if he were say 5 or 6. But thats how my brother and I learned German. Our parents threw us into the middle (so to speak) of only german speaking kids to play with our first summer in Germany. Only one child's father spoke very limited english. So in order to play we had to pick up on it rather quickly. By the end of our first year in Germany we were both pretty fluent in German.

(although sadly since that was more then 20 years ago I remember enough to curse out my MIL and ask where ther bathrooom is)

uh... i guess they would... is he a boy from other country? if so i suppose u should get a translater for him and say "si" in spanish *example in another lang* "yes" for Si?

That's what most language teachers believe in! Speak in that language only! And if they do not understand the meaning of a word attempt to explain to them in that language rather than translating.

Btw, he does speak a little English already :D

I don't know about children, but I can speak from personal experience when I say that actively practicing another language is one of the best ways to learn it. I have heard that children are generally more able to pick up other languages however.
When I am able to attend school, I am a spanish major. I have found that practice to be especially true. It helps concrete another language in one's head that nothing else will do. There are basic teaching methods and groundwork practices to be upheld however.
If you know, what kind of learner is this boy? Visual, audio, hands on? Go from there when you go about teaching him English. It's all trial and error until you find something that works, afterall.
Good luck. I hope it goes well. :)

Thanks for the advice! I agree that it IS trial and error.

Im guessing hands on is the best approach!

Another thing, do you know how to speak his first language? If so, coorelation between his language (its words) and English helps considerably. :) Just let me know if you need any more advice than this. I will try to help. :)

Im learning his first language, which is Turkish, and Im helping him learn English :D

Im learning his first language, which is Turkish, and Im helping him learn English :D

Dont know why that posted twice.....!

I moved to an english speaking country when I was nine. I only spoke Spanish, I knew some basic words in english, like chair, moon and house.
Our school set up a class for all the kids that didnt speak english to go to. Teacher tried her best to make us read and show us picture cards of words that we could learn. It was really scary I remember.

Are you just teaching him to speak English, or are you teaching him to write it as well; like teaching him grammar and spelling and things?

who cares no ones care about those things jeesh who do you think we are teahcers or something whats the point you know what i mean to say anyways right i mean duh

I hope you're joking... lol

Haha, yes. I most certainly am :P

i would assume she is =]
grammar and spelling are an important part of learning a foreign language

You should play scrabble with him while teaching, I LOVE scrabble!

I think there's some computer software around that helps with this sort of thing. Kids these days are into computers so maybe google that. He might be more interested in sitting down playing on a computer than sitting down for english lessons with an adult. You could also integrate some interests he has. I babysit a three year old who has a severe language delay for twenty hours a week and what I do with him to get him to learn words and sentences is just let him play and then talk to him about what he's doing. for example he likes cars so i will say "red car", give him a blue car, say "blue car", etc. as he already knows a language he will probably catch on a lot quicker than the boy I'm working with who has no language at all apart from what he's learned over the last year.
If he has a huge interest in sports for example you could talk to him in englsih about the sports he likes.
Also using songs really helps. A lot of the words that my boy has learned have to do with the nursery rhymes he knows and I know that when I was in primary school learning foreign languages I'd learn a lot from the songs they taught us to sing and I can still remember them now.
There are also heaps of free websites around that give you free priint outs and such that are intended for teachers and parents that homeschool their children to use for lessons. One of them is www.enchantedlearning.com that has a lot of free print outs. If you want more websites like that I have a small list so let me know.

www.byki.com

Download the software onto your computer for free. Turkish AND English is available through that site. It is great for beginners in any language. You'll have to graduate to a better program eventually though...if that is what you wish. :)

Thank you for all your input! :)