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senor boogie woogie

Hola!

I am in China and I started a job teaching adult students. The classes are easy, the school is basically an "English corner" although we do other things too.

I need TOPICS for discussion. Where can I find these on the internet?Where is a good resource for conversation topics and other relevant activities. These students are high level learners, they come to us to practice their English speaking and to learn new words.

Any help appreciated.

Senor

yaramaz · Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2004 6:54 am Post subject:

Senor,

I thrive on http://iteslj.org and http://www.onestopenglish.com They got me through hours of demanding adult Turks in the evenings after a long day of wrestling kids... I have a huge favourites list at home on my laptop if you want more. Just PM me.

exhaustedly,

yaramaz

Marcoregano · Joined: 19 May 2003 Posts: 872 Location: Hong Kong

Just a word of warning....I've tried the http://iteslj.org conversation topics with Korean and HK adults and they went down like a lead balloon (just didn't stimulate conversation in the way that they would have with European students). However, they might be OK with with higher level Asian students, especially on a one-on-one or small group basis.

denise · Joined: 23 Apr 2003 Posts: 3419 Location: finally home-ish

Why not have the students select the topics? Might not work if they're shy or just deadly dull, but if you've got a group that actively wants to learn... I've tried it on occasion--tell them each to write two or three possible topics on strips of paper, and then choose randomly. You can steer their choices a little bit if you want to--I like getting them to discuss moderately controversial/debatable/political topics, so I give them a couple of examples of such topics.

d

Glenski · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 12844 Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

Best source of conversation topics...the local or international news.

guest of Japan · Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 1601 Location: Japan

While I agree with Glenski, I'd also like to add human interest stories to the mix.

I've had limited success with letting students choose the topics. What I've found with Japanese students is that they all choose to talk about movies. However, the conversations are completely limited to who the actor or actress is and the title. They go something like this:

"Have you seen the Green Mile?"

Yes. It's very interesting. I love Tom Hanks. Have you seen Forrest Gump?"

"No, I haven't, but I saw Apollo 13."

"I didn't like Apollo 13."

"Really. I thought it was very suspense."

"I don't like space movies."

"I see."

quiet.......quiet......more quiet.... Finally, another student will bring up a different movie and the conversation repeats itself.