Job Discussion Forums

[Sweetsee]

Morning Brooks,

I received a copy of 'Topic Talk' from EFL Press in the mail yesterday, are you familiar with it?


Enjoy your Friday,
s

[william wallace]

nil

[mondrian]

I can now add another little gem to my catalogue of teenage misfits.
The class monitor to one of my non-English majors came up to me today to enquire about the forthcoming examination. He asked what could be done to ensure that his whole class could pass.
I suspected a "red envelope", but will give him the benefit of the doubt. I quietly pointed out that a third of his class would fail even before I examined them, as they had never (not once in the semester) attended class. As 30% of the marks were for attendance and class participation. and they needed 65% to pass; they needed to be"native speakers" to do so. If they were one of those, then they were in the wrong University and on the wrong course.
His reply was a classic: "But no one has told us to attend your class!" I pointed to the others students, and asked who had told them to come each and every week throughout the semester. And I also reminded HIM that on several occasions he should have told the absentees of the consequences of their actions.
So are such students the worst, the most stupid, the most naive or is there, as I suspect, something in the system that WILL allow them to pass. I don't care about that; I will fail them.

[Brooks]

yeah, I have that book.
I got the 2nd edition in the mail, too.

[Sweetsee]

Haven't tried it yet but I like the look of it. I will be trying it out next week with my night high school students in Tokyo, just what I needed.
What do you think about it Brooks?

[Brooks]

it is not bad.
I think it works best for private lessons.
Thursday I taught a one-on-one class and it worked really well.

I did order the CD yesterday. Generally I think the listening part is kind of hard, but for students that lived abroad it is fine.
I think the CD was made in Hawaii.
EFL Press is from Saitama, but I forgot where.

[afowles]

So would anybody actually be in on this project? Seems like we (the people who actually do the teaching) would be the best to write a book for teenagers rather than some former teacher now teacher trainer who spends most of his time at home somewhere in Europe.

If you are interested, drop me an e-mail. I'm serious about this, so I would appreciate the same.

[Sweetsee]

Just had a very good lesson using TT2 with my drop-outs in Tokyo, was only the second go but I can see it working for me. I grabbed the warm-up off the site which is a lesson in itself. They grab words from the word bank to complete the target questions from the listening task and write their own answers. Then of course there is the listening task where they simply circle the answers and then practice saying the questions and finally they ask two of their classmates the questions, never made it that far though. But without the warm-up I found it rough going for lower level students and dry. Thing I do like about it is that they are working the same questions three times and it is plenty of material for one lesson, even two for lower level kids, or more. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it helped that I was really connecting with this group tonight, or I guess I should say it ws the first time that I can remember that some students were really powering it. Maybe the material was that good or maybe it is just that class. Could also be because there were many kids absent and the ones that were there were free of the usual distractions and b.s.
Those kids are off to Okinawa next week. Not too bad being in night school in Tokyo, yeah?
On a side note: popped over to a friend's place earlier and he was telling me about a guy that blagged off with a million clams from the school he was at, that's dollars by the way, seriously, cleaned out the place. Knarly, yeah? And supposedly shacho needs someone to run things...hmmm? My friend heard this through the owner of a recyling shop that knows shacho, in fact the guy had to clear out this character's place. Never occured to me to go to work for an eikaiwa but I imagine there is money to be made for someone with my experience.
Sorry to stray and to get back on the topic of teenage material, TT2 is right on the mark as far as being tailored for the Japanese teens. Tonight's lesson was on about going to L.A. vacay; Disneyland, stuffed animals, etc.
Sorry about the long, lame post, just feeling really pumped for some reason, could be sleep depravation or overwork, or both, or lots of things. Sorry.
Sure I'll regret this tomorrow. Can't wait, for tomorrow that is.

Enjoy,
s

[TheLongWayHome]

Here are a few articles I came across the other day:

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/teen_angst.shtml
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/teen_interested.shtml

[Jetgirly]

In my old staffroom we had some random photocopies from the Series "Discussions: A to Z" which were very interesting. The ones we had were for upper-intermediate students and touched on everything from dwarf throwing to vegetarianism. I believe there are other books in this series, and I would highly recommend them.