Job Discussion Forums

[Tara2117]

Hello,


I'm Troy MacClure. You may remember me from such films as "Help, I'm All Out Of Ideas!"

I posted recently about my private 12-year old student. To summarize, she used to live in Singapore, so she has quite good English conversation skill. She takes a "real" group lesson on a different day... her lesson with me is 40 minutes, private, and aimed at helping her NOT lose the conversation skill that she has.

I've been teaching her for a year and a half, and have run out of ideas...


ANYWAY... I spoke to my boss and colleagues, and we are going to try to convince her mom to let us use some sort of book in the lesson, to keep the student interested, and provide more structure, and hopefully give us a springboard for conversation. (The girl herself told me, "I want to learn about many things... I want to do something different every week." So long-term writing or reading projects are out.)

95% of my other classes are your garden-variety group grammar lesson, using textbooks like Let's Go, Get Together, Get Real, Side by Side, etc. I'm not familiar with OTHER types of books for young students.

I'm looking for something which will provide interesting, fairly simple-to-read articles or stories about a variety of topics. I don't want to make her practice grammar, as she does this in her other lesson. I'd like for her to pick up some useful new vocabulary, get a little reading practice, and most importantly, have something interesting that I can build activities and conversation around.

Any advice for a suitable book? We have catalogues at my office, but it's had to make choices based on blurbs in a catalogue. I'd like some advice from those of you who've used such books before.

Please and thank you!!!

[Deckard]

De[ending upon your students level this book might be appropriate ---Even More True Stories: An Intermediate Reader .. --- There is also less advanced versions in the series.

I have used it for various students, with decent levels of English. The book is broken into sections. Each section is based on a short article about some true event (my favorite was the story about lost pirates treasure in New foundland) The stories are all true, and generally interesting, at least for the students lol. But of course it all depends on your own student. I have used it mostly with jhs students, so it might be too old for your student. But, that being said one of my students was younger than yours and she found it really interesting (she was close to bilingual though)

anyway the book has interesting articles that you can personalize a lesson from and a good accompanying grammer/writing section.

hope this helps

[Glenski]

Hard to say without knowing just how good her fluency really is. So, within her limits, consider these:

Oral book reports. Use graded readers to make it easier to get through them quickly.

Discuss the news, sports, weather.

Show 30-second video clips and ask for her response. Or prediction.
Show them without sound first and see if she can describe what is being said.

Cloze exercises on songs.

Have her write. Anything. Speaking and writing are different, but output is output. Get some comics, delete the dialogue, and have her full it in.

Keep a diary.

So, just how good is her fluency? What are her weak points?

[Tara2117]

She is able to carry on a decent conversation. Her listening skills are great. I wouldn't say she's bilingual, but she understands 99% of what I say, and she is able to express herself quite well, if not always correctly.

[Conor_Ire]

[starteacher]

Not sure of her level but the Boost series from Pearson Longman is a good start for returnees. Books are split seperately into several skills, writing, reading, listening, vocab, grammar, reading instead of one book that has all skills. You can focus on one skill and chop and change the sequence as you go up the scale.

There used to also be a New Parade series by Cambridge for returnees, plus Worldwide by Cambridge. Check their websites to see if they are still around.

The materials for these books are generally taken from actual materials used in native countries and from books used with the same name, but toned down a little. But the topics fit the right age.

For reading (and expanding on it), the Reading Explorer series by Cengage (Heinle / Thomson ) takes lots of stuff from National Geographic and so the book is colourful with lots of topics and world issues. Good for JHS with overseas experience.

Usually, it is not the level of English at stake, but the topic. Also the above, there is a progression so your student will at least (plus her parents) feel she is making some progress or at least keeping up.

If you want more material for returnees, Compass Publishing have a lot of good progressive texts, of the top of my head, there is something called "School Subject Readings" .

[Tara2117]

Thanks so much for the suggestions... I'm looking at some of the books you guys suggested in catalogues now. Arigatou!!!!