It's humbling to realize that if given the chance, our students can do an even better job of teaching english to their classmates than most qualified teachers. I recently gave my advance class an assignment to put together a video lesson plan to teach conversational english to their classmates. I was amazed at the quality of their presentation. The activity generated a lot of interest and discussion (it mostly centered around sexuality, dating, relationships and marriages). But more importantly that the activity sparked a great deal of creativity, teamwork and classroom synergy. Here is an example of a dating lesson plan that four of my students delivered http://www.onlinetutoringworld.com/less ... dating.htm
Although the topics discussed were very controversial, the presenters handled it in a mature manner. It also helped to pull the whole class into many interesting discussions about issues that interested them.
I gave the class a 1 hour time limit, a few themes to choose from and some guidelines to go by - submit a video, photograph, article, related questions, trivia, idioms and an esl game. You can get many free videos from Youtube, Google Video, Yahoo Video and about 150 other sites to choose from. You can get photographs by searching the web for "free stock photographs" or "public domain photographs".
If you're stuck for ideas on how to motivate your class, try this great activity.
Student Video Presentation
Moderators: Dimitris, maneki neko2, Lorikeet, Enrico Palazzo, superpeach, cecil2, Mr. Kalgukshi2