Job Discussion Forums

[Iwantmyrightsnow]

Seems like I have to start ess club for 1st & 2nd year junior high students. How do you start with students that have almost no English? Don't want it to be like class (the style we have to use is quite rigid)?
Any ideas?

Anyone know the silent way? Did it with a high school club before and it worked well. Any ideas of how it will go with JHS?

A big thanks in advance!

[guest of Japan]

Hi,

Firstly I must say that I'm impressed that you have used the Silent Way successfully. I could never get a handle on how to use it, but since you have some experience that might be a good idea for your new situation.

If you have the luxury of doing this club by yourself you might want to try Community Language Learning, since I know you speak Japanese. TPR seems like it would be appropriate as well.

I'm in a high school under supervision of a teacher who thinks she knows everything there is to know about teaching, so radical approaches just don't get an opportunity. Additionally, I just don't have time to do much planning. I tend to rely on a few activity textbooks titled "Pairwork," "Grammar" and "Vocabulary" put out by Penguin Press. They are filled with pair and group activities from beginner to intermediate.

There is also an interesting book of classroom games that I have. I can't think of the title off-hand, and it is sitting on my desk at school. It's problably titled something like "Classroom Language Games and Activities." You need larger groups for it to be effective and sadly my English club is tiny, so it collects dust.

Good luck.

[Iwantmyrightsnow]

Hey Guest, can you fill me in on community language learning?

TPR is good but how long can I use it for? Wouldn't the kids get a little bored?

Will have to check out some games. But it seems that it will be all first years and no 2nds. Can you play games without any background knowledge. Only one I can think of that doesn't need so much background knowledge is chinese whispers.

I have studied Japanese the silent way on and off for 10 years so am kinda familar with it. Have had great success with small groups with it, especially one college student this past year.

[guest of Japan]

Hello Iwantmyrightsnow.

Community Language Learning is a psychological approach. The goal is to make an environment where the students are comfortable and relaxed and can therefore overcome their reticence gradually. It's best with groups of around 6. The language goal is to teach students how to teach what they want to say. To do this you can have a discussion about something of interest to the students. Of course they won't have any idea of the English to use, so they should run the Japanese by you. Then you teach them how to say it, and they say it to the group. You then make sure the group can understand as well. You'll want to take careful notes of the language used to review and build around. Tape recording can be done too.

Honestly my Japanese isn't good enough for me to run a class this way, but I've done it in spurts when I teach new students who have really low English skills. If you choose to do this approach, the classes will be haavily dependent on you for quite a while. After a while, the students will probably start to rebel against the approach out of frustration of not being able to say what they want. This is the point where they will actually start to take risks.

If I were in your shoes, I might like to mix Community Language Learning, TPR, and The Silent Way(Not all at one time mind you). The silent way seems good for vocabulary building, TPR seems good for developing listening skills and learning basic sentence structures as well as learning vocabulary that can be visualized. Finally, Community Language Learning can help them to develop their skill in using the language for communicative purposes, with low risk in the beginning. If you bounce between the approaches, I think the students won't get too bored. I'd use games to add a little fun and energy to the equation.

That's probably the extent of my knowledge. I hope it helps.

[Iwantmyrightsnow]

Thanks Guest...sounnds interesting. Wil check it out on the net more.

[LA Galaxy]

I was actually in charge of the ESS when I was teaching at a High School. I would try to get as many board games as possible. They liked scrabble, life, and other easy games in English. Have them count while they play board games. They can play go fish,etc. It was hard getting the kids to talk, but after a while they tried to talk more. We also played songs in English and had them fill in the blank some of the slower english songs.

During Halloween we had a party and we watched Charlie Browns Halloween. We had a Christmas party as well and had eggnog and a christmas gift exchange. For the school festival they did a little skit in English. I guess the main thing is to try to recruit students to join and make it seem fun, I wouldn't make it like a class setting. It all depends on what your bosses want. In all honesty it was a bit boring, it was hard to get students to consistently come to the meetings and they were not that motivated, we had some good times though.
Good luck.

[Iwantmyrightsnow]

Had forgotten about board games. Maybe uno & fish, scrabble......what other ones are good for 1st year JHS with no english?

[Celeste]

Check out www.bogglesworld.com for some good conversation board games. I really like the "Say 4 things" game. This website has a lot of good activities for this age of students. A really good photocopiable activity book for this age group is called "Tombola" (Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company (December, 1992)
ISBN: 0175559678 ).

[Iwantmyrightsnow]

[Brooks]

I liked using Mr. Bean videos because they were mostly silent. The students had to say or write what Mr. Bean was doing.
Videos from Wallace and Gromit aren`t bad and there are workbooks for both of them.

I tried drama for the bunkasai and it worked well. The students wrote and performed their own skits and it went well.

[Iwantmyrightsnow]

Have been reading up on communicative language learning more. Difficult to find exactly what to do. http://members.fortunecity.com/nadabs/communitylearn

Don't think my Japanese skills are good enough to conduct a lesson this way. Would be interested to see it though. Also wonder if it is meant as a one of kinda thind thing or meant to be regular. Diffficult to maintain doing it I think.

Once participated in a Global Studies discussion group conducted this way and the students seemed to enjoy it. But as the topics were in depth it was very teacher reliant.

[Glenski]

Instead of making the ESS club something that is just a carnival center for games, why not give the kids a purpose?

Scavenger hunt for certain English expressions. (done in their free time in the neighborhood)

Collect stamps from penpals around the world. (or emails)

Make a list of English reading resources in their city or on the Internet.

Make a list of graded readers they would like the school to buy for the library.

[Iwantmyrightsnow]

All good ideas Glenski. I am actually starting a volunteer graded reading scheme with bunch of 2nd year volunteers. Unfortunately, ESS is only 1st year students with no, or next to no english.

[guest of Japan]

[tokyo_girl]

Any new ideas for club?

The school I am at this year, while very good in many respects,
has me in charge of a disfunctional English club in the JHS.
There are a number of quite socially challenged students,
who are quite passive and don't talk much in Japanese let alone English.
There are 10 students from Junior 1 to Junior 3.
I haven't done English club before this year and am light on ideas.

Any suggestions very welcome!