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[jaytee]

I teach conversational english *shudder* to chinese students between the ages of 14 to about 18. They aren't interested in sitting there and listening to me blabber on for 40 minutes - they'd prefer to sleep or study maths homework. However, when i play games or get them off their bottoms they really enjoy it and there is always a good class dynamic - and I have fun also, which I think is important. So my question is, can you tell me any activities or games that you have used in the past that have worked well for you? I have been to Daves cookbook and already used some ideas from there, but a lot of them are not applicable to me. My classes are about 60 students, and they are cramped. Photocopies and other materials are not an option. So the less materials needed the better, however i can make some props myself.
Any ideas or advice would be appreciated.

[Twisting in the Wind]

Two ideas, one I've shared previously:

1)Secretary Messenger game, also known as "Telephone." Divide class into teams of between 3-5 people. (approx time 45 min)

Take one person from each team outside the room. Close the door. Take them aways away from the classroom as the remaining ss inside will try to cheat by listening at the door.

You will have written 5-10 sentences on a piece of paper. The sentences exemplify some structure or vocabulary you want to review with the ss.

Say the first sentence using natural speech patterns and in a normal rythm as many times as they need to hear it.

The students will race back into the classroom when they have heard it enough. My rule is once they've crossed the threshhold back into the classroom, they cannot come back outside for further listening, BUT, I will continue to say the sentence for any student or ss who need to hear it as long as they remain outside.

They go back to their teams and another member of the team listens and writes what the student says. Engage other team members as "helpers" for the other two.

You collect the papers and write each sentence on the board, deducting points for grammar, spelling, word order mistakes, etc, however anal you wanna be. I give a time limit for completion, something like after the first group gets in its paper, the other groups have 1 min to get in theirs'--and I make sure to make a big production of watching my watch and counting the mins down. They love that, and the ss who've already gotten in their paper will help to count down the other teams!

Hype this game up A LOT, esp for younger ss.They will feed off your enthusiasm. I've used this game in classes of Chinese or mainly Asians, and it gets them out of their seats and just squealing with laughter.Even the shy ones. They have so much fun they are just tumbling over each other to get back in the room! They LOVE to see their sentences written on the board with error correction. It's not just a game to waste time--it helps them review, and understand that their listening "skills" are usually abysmal, and what they think they've been hearing is something else altogether.

2). Debate Activity (I know this must have a name, but can't remember it at the moment)

Arrange chairs or desks in rows facing each other.

Assign A to one row; B to the other.

Write on board,
1. A You are a cop
B You are a motorist. A has just stopped you. Talk him out of giving you a ticket.

2. A. You are a father
B. You are a son who wants to marry a poor girl. Try to convince your father to let you marry her.

3. A. You are an employee. Convince your boss to give you a raise.
B. You are the boss. you cannot afford a raise this year. Reach an agreement with your employee.

And on and on. You are limited only by your imagination. What ensues is a sort of controlled chaos with everyone, talking, screaming, shouting, and gesticulating at once. Stop the proceedings every so often to regain control and to ask a few groups to model their debate before the rest of the class. Give them maybe a minute to do the first free conversation, then stop them. Then get them going again for another min or two, and so on.


Note: This activity is only for ss with a pretty high level of verbal fluency, intermediate, maybe false high beginner, and above. You may have to pre-teach some vocab, such "convince."

I have had consistent good success with both of these games/activities. PM me if anything in my instructions was unclear.

Good luck and have fun! [/b]

[Twisting in the Wind]

Ewwwwwwww. I just re read your post.

60 students??????

Maybe my ideas wouldn't work that well for you, then.. Do you have a teacher assistant who could help you monitor? I think it might still be doable, but I've never done these activities with a class of that size before. I think you could still play Secretary messenger with them. 10 teams of 6 ss each. Give each team a whacko English name and write the team names on the board--then when you get their sentences, you can write each sentence under each team name. Whew!!!! Exhausts me just thinking about it!

[Glenski]

Charades.
20 questions.
Pictionary (you don't have to buy the game).
Surveys.

[Roger]

I hope for you that you get the full moral support from the principal and colleagues, because you are going to ned that.
I wouldn't hold classroom sessions with such a crowd - and have I had classes of 60 juveniles in China? Yes, and many times!

What worked for me - provided the school didn't throw a spanner in the works occasionally (as for instance when the said my students didn't learn to talk or didn't learn enough new words...!), were exercises such as the following:
- physical exercises, including relay races on the tracks, or orienteering; competition is highly appreicated by students as it is quite novel to all of them!

- have them copy a text with as few mistakes as possible; the text must be placed at a sufficient distance away from their desks so that they havce to walk back and forth, trying to memorise and remember it. You can divide the class into competitive groups and elect the winning team!

- I also had wonderful lessons with students teaching them to take notes on some other subject, i.e. the climate, weather, etc.; I found that 14year olds can be very cooperative at doing this although it piled extra work on me as I had to proofread their notes to see how they spelt each word. My classes didn't have 60 students, though...

- You can do any number of riddles - always welcome.

- If your lessons become a bit too repetitive, you can perhaps try to enliven your lessons with a couple of tongue twisters.

Don't forget you are doing an impossible mission, and if you just try to please your charges while e more than half of your chore!

[Twisting in the Wind]

Simon Says might be an activity you could use with them, as well. I'm not sure their level of English but you could adjust it accordingly.

As with my previous advice, they'll feed off your enthusiasm. I was known for being a complete maniac in the classroom and the students loved it and responded.

Start off by shouting "Everybody STAAAAAAND up. STAAAAAND UP!"

Then do a few warm up commands to get them used to the game.

Exs: Simon Says: Touch your.....

Simon says put your hand on your neighbor's shoulder.

Put your hand on your neighbor's shoulder....

Ohhhhhh, Simon didn't SAY IT--- Sit down, sit down, you, sit down.....

Then when you get to the end and you have just a few students, you can conclude:

Simon says "Come here"

(They come trudging up)

Then extend your hand and say "How are you?"

They'll answer "Fine," at which point you shriek, "Simon didn't say it, Simon didn't say it...."

You get the point.

A fun game, oft overlooked for young adults. You just have to know how to adapt it.

[moonraven]

Did I miss it--or did you not indicate the English level of your students?

One thing I have done in Conversation classes is break students into teams and give them a debate-style resolution in regard to a current world problem. They have time to prepare their presentation and then the teams take turns presenting. If you want to you can then break the pro and con teams into two lines and let them try to reach a consensus.

This keeps you out of the limelight--they are the ones who need the practice speaking and presenting in English--and makes the class meaningful instead of silly.

[Twisting in the Wind]

[moonraven]

Sorry--most of the ESL/EFL classes I have observed (and I have observed MANY, as I train teachers) have been boring and/or silly.

They did not give students confidence in using the language. They did not encourage critical thinking. They did not contextualize the language.

Most ESL/EFL teachers are simply not educators. They tend to look down on students, and do not recognize their potential and their intelligence.

[Guy Courchesne]

I agree Raven...

A student is capable of so much in that place between the two languages, that part of the mind that generates the images. New teachers easily forget (or were never trained to realize) that the students in front of them can more than likely conceptualize everything the teacher can (and often more! ).

Once again, a Socratic path to accessing the images works best, in my huble opinion.

[moonraven]

Not just new teachers denigrate their students, Guy. Some of the worst offenders in this regard are teachers who have been in the business long enough to know better--but they keep giving the same, old, tired, uninspired classes. And I'm not just talking about ESL/EFL teachers, either.

[Guy Courchesne]

Unfortunate to be sure.

In our TEFL course, I built in an extra chapter on culture. In this chapter, we try to get those taking the course to be conscious of not only cultural differences, but to use these differences in the classroom to spur communicative exchanges in ways the teacher would have a hard time planning a class (thinking younger Americans and Canadians here). More often than not, it's a huge eye-opener for first-worlders to hold up a mirror to themselves.

Anything to avoid getting sucked into the normal teach-from-the-book routine.

[moonraven]

I haven't used a textbook in years--and I don't recommend using one. Not only does it subvert the teacher's creativity, but it also ties a carbomb to the students' creativity--which SHOULD be the focus of every class.

[Guy Courchesne]

I don't know if I would have used carbomb as a metaphor (though I like it!), but yes, lessons planned in the bowels of Cambridge University Press Inc. rarely encourage creativity.

I've been seeing that a lot of the lack of creativity on teahcers' parts stems from the belief that the traveling english teacher is some sort of missionary, here in the 'developing world' teaching to enlighten the ignorant masses. We set up our TEFL trainees in practice classes so that they spend as much time listening to students as they do trying to plan a lesson, with interesting results.

Once, we had a TEFL student in our group (a Republican and Methodist - his own description) who planned a practice class around the 9/11 attacks. His idea of creativity was to get the students to role-play government types in charge of formulating a response to the attack. To his GREAT surprise, the activity did not work as he planned - he expected something to be planned as actually is occuring. He actually got angry with the stdents who kept insisting on questioning the causes of the attack, taking nothing for granted. An eye-opener for me observing the class, though I don't think the TEFL trainee learned as much as he could have.

[moonraven]

I did a 9/11 activity with 6th graders the day after it happened. They got together in trios and wrote a news story--who, what, why, when, where and how--and then made illustrations and presented their results. Nobody thought it happened the way the US government said it did. Only one group thought Osama Bin Laden was involved, and they took his side.

With 7th, 8th and 9th graders the task was to compare what happened on 9/11/2001 with what happened on 9/11/1973. That meant they had to go to Internet and find out about the golpe de estado in Chile. Some teams felt that the same folks did both--that is to say the CIA. Several teams mentioned the similarity in the abuse of human rights immediately following the two 9/11s. One 7th grader had made a big map of all the detention centers in Chile, and was very frustrated to think that be might have to wait almost 30 years to be able to make one of ALL the detention centers in the US.

This illustrates that despite the US propaganda machine spewing b.s. at Mexico 24/7, even Mexican children are not ignorant enough to swallow what most of the posters on this forum gulped down as the Gospel according to George W.