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[patsensei]

Hi. Unfortunately for me my high school English conversation classes have been made optional which means I have to compete with other courses in my school for students. So I have to make a course outline for my English conversation course at school in order to attract students for 2008 and I was wondering if anyone might be able to give me feedback about my course outline I have put together.

Here goes:

Course outline for 3rd Year English Conversation Course

Objective:
To give students confidence, vocabulary and useful expressions in order to have a meaningful conversation, express their opinions and debate topics.

Things we do in class:
Communication activity worksheets
Practicing opinions/Making appropriate reactions to others
Debate practice/Critical thinking exercises
Presentations
Role playing


Thanks for any help in advance.

[canuck]

[TokyoLiz]

Pat and Canuck,

We don't know the proficiency level of your students. Have they passed Eiken pre 2 level or 2? Can they handle the kinds of activities you're proposing?

The program certainly sounds stimulating, and depending on how motivated your students are and the kind of learning culture in your school, the topics could either be a big draw or a big scare. Debate and presentations may be turn-offs. However, if your kids are highly motivated and think English speaking is valuable and cool, then you'd likely find debate something they want to do.

If they're lower motivation, lower proficiency, why not consider drama? Using a playscript for a tv show or movie or stage play they already know may be one way to get more to sign up.

Within your play unit, you could work in

- critical thinking exercises - What would you do if you were in this situation? Stop at Scene 3, and imagine what happens next.

- functional language - The characters talk about making a plan. In pairs, students do pair work for making plans, present mini skits of their own

- mini debates - some controversial subject comes out of the script, and you debate it in class

All of this is subject to time constraints, of course. I wouldn't attempt to make a year-long syllabus like this one unless the students had at least two lessons a week.

[furiousmilksheikali]

Too vague Pat.

As Liz says we can't give you advice unless you tell us a little more about your students and how many lessons that you are going to teach in a year. Have they been/ will they go on homestays abroad? (If they will then that right there is something you can train your students for) Do they study English to get out of maths/science courses? (If they are then that should give you some idea of their motivation level). Do you have male/female/mixed classes? Have they experience in areas such as reading long texts such as graded reader novels or weekly newspapers such as Japan Times Student or would their level be too low for this?

Anyway, as I say... a little more information if you don't mind.

[patsensei]

Hi all. Thanks for the input. Yeah. I guess I was a little vague. Sorry.
More info:

I would say about 15 to 25% would be highly motivated. Probably about 20% to 30% would do the course as an easy option and the rest of them inbetween the two. That said it is quite a good school.
They are in their 3rd year of high school and most of them and their parents are probably concerned with entrance exams for university. They don`t have a homestay this year. It`s a girls school and they have a class twice a week. They have experience in reading but a newspaper would probably be too difficult unless I broke it down for them.

I was hoping that my course could give a mix of serious study and fun communication activities but I`m not sure how best to word this.

[furiousmilksheikali]

They don't have a homestay this year but I am guessing that they have had which gives you a bit of scope for having your students compare Japan to wherever they went overseas.

Also, newspaper articles can be difficult but they my also be useful tools for starting a discussion. The articles I'm referring to are not the ones in which even native speakers have a hard time fully understanding, steer clear of the Washington Post, The Guardian, The Financial Times etc.., and try using the newspapers that are designed for learners of English. You can find these at almost any newspaper stand outside of stations and often have articles which are pared down and don't use as much difficult vocab or grammatical structures.

If you use them make sure that you do a lot of pre-teaching of the vocab and get them fully aware of what the discussion is about before you have them discuss it.

Also, in discussions you must make sure that the students know how to do it and equip them with the language of discussion. It is no good just slinging out an article and saying, "What do you think? What's your opinion?" Usually you should get them working on something fairly uncontroversial beforehand as developing discussion skills is a very difficult thing to do, I know plenty of native English speakers who have no idea how to it in their own language let alone another.

I don't know if that has answered your question (in fact you haven't actually asked one) but I hope that helps.