Job Discussion Forums

[nickpellatt]

I teach 3 classes a day, and the logistics of this means I teach the same lesson to 3 different classes. Yesterday the main activity in my lesson was to practice listening skills, with a CD about blogs and blogging.

The lead-in, is a hangman game with the word being 'myspace', I then elicit all the other sites they (the Ss) use, and elicit the term 'social networking sites'. From here we do a spider diagram on the board, which runs through the reasons we use sites of this nature ... finally someone suggests 'blogs', which works as a great lead-in to the main task.

My third class walked in yesterday, and shot the whole thing down by one of the students saying straight away, 'the word is myspace, the next word is social networking sites and you want us to say blogs so we can listen to the CD'. That was mighty frustrating!

Today, that same class was first ... and this time both the second and third class came in and shot down the whole intro and schemata setting for todays lesson.

[fluffyhamster]

I guess that's the sort of thing that you'll get if you're teaching teenagers on summer courses (right?). Anyway, from the sound of it, you could've elicited or supplied the required words a lot more directly and swiftly (e.g. by providing definitions for which the students had to supply or match the word(s)), and even Derren Brown would get heckled if the audience knew which word he had up his sleeve - and he creates far better illusions!

But sure, behaviour like that could become a problem if you have a genuine puzzle or mystery sort of activity that is remotely interesting. Probably the only realistic option then would be that only one class ever gets to do that activity, boring though that might be for the remaining classes - I mean, you aren't going to start planning several completely different courses for the little herbets, are you? They will deserve everything you don't now throw at them.

If all else fails, try to get into teaching adults, who generally have less time to spend together chatting and hatching childish schemes.

[nickpellatt]

Yeah, its teenagers and summer schools ... to be fair, this is the only time on this course they have really wound me up though ... I was 'heckled' LOL, I hadnt thought of it like that.

Just sounding off really as I didnt have a good day today (see other thread).

Interesting you say about eliciting though ... during my training we had it drummed into us to elicit pretty much everything! From setting contexts (as in my example) through to pre-teaching vocabulary. They didnt go to much on the 'present' part of the traditional PPP method, they actually called it COW with the C being conceptualise rather than present.

Along with that, it was all about eliciting everything.

Ps - adults in december. heading back to China!

'Lets talk for a second about Paris ... now whats the capital city there?
(Paris)
'Paris has quite a famous building doesnt it? Its shaped like this .. *gesture*
(Eiffel Tower)
'How would we describe it using a single adjective?'
(tall)
'Yep, its is quite tall, are there taller buildings in Paris?'
(no)
'So we can say its the ............. building in Paris'
(tallest)
'What part of speech is that'
(superlative)
'Great, now we are going to do some activities about superlatives, open your book to page XXX'

Gee ... are you telling me this is quite annoying LOL!

[fluffyhamster]

Elicitation like that may not be quite as bad as what guys like Sauveur did ( http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=g2e7iw_F-ZcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA218 ), but it still doesn't "admit" much, and may just be telling students a lot that they either already know (assuming they could comprehend the patter) or could easily learn from a bilingual self-study course or dictionary.

I'm not saying that courses should consist of only "hard" words and the like, but often the person who seems to be doing the "most" is just the teacher. I'd like to see the target language used more authentically (which includes in the patter - and maybe the patter, and its building and shaping, should be the main focus, in truer conversation classes!), and leave the "obvious" stuff to e.g. appendices of example sentences (e.g. 'Is the Eiffel Tower still the tallest building in Paris?' - potentially teaches 'still' in addition), otherwise there is less chance that the classroom will prepare the student for the real world as well as it might.

Perhaps there ultimately isn't that much to be actually "said" and practised much about adjectives like 'tall'?

BTW shouldn't that start with 'Lets talk for a second about France ... now what's the capital city there?'?

[nickpellatt]

ooops, he has caught me out there! It should read 'France'.

One of the problems I have is I am seeing these classes for 90 mins a day for 11 teaching days. They get to used to this style of teaching and are probably looking for the punchline/magic trick/rabbit in the hat etc.

It does work quite well in setting dialogue and in-class interactivity though. Although it does initially rely on teacher input and driving, it does set them up well for volunteering and sharing information later in the class and during pair and group work.

Activity wise, I can get them talking a fair bit with superlatives ... its quite easy for practising the language they already know in a free and fluent way, although I should probably use it as an opportunity to expand vocabulary as well as practising it.

[Justin Trullinger]

[nickpellatt]

Rotating materials is the answer..I did change the initial hangman lead-in from myspace to facebook ... they called out all the sites immediately anyway...this is the 10th group I have had with this organisation ... first time I encountered this. great group otherwise tho!!

[Nikolaus Gyoji]

[spiral78]

Are you actually a trained teacher? You don't seem to have a clue about punctuation. You have commas in all sorts of bizarre and inappropriate places. There are rules about such things. Also, a careful speaker would not have used "their" in his or her title. Also, you have a completely unnecessary ellipsis in you last paragraph. Also, "todays lesson" should be "today's lesson".

That's kind of out of left field...we tend to focus more on content than details on this forum, though I have to admit that I, too, sometimes jump on silly or repeated mistakes in language use.

Anyway, since we're on the topic, I believe it's 'also' non-standard to begin written sentences in English with 'also.'

[nickpellatt]

Nikolaus, Im a careful speaker and a reckless writer. I take a lot more care over my Scrabble games though Im sure if you are aware of functional linguistics / grammar, and Halliday et al, you will be familiar with corpus studies that frequently show non-standard usage within different registers. Forums / Emails / Blogs may count as examples of this.

Sorry if it bothers you. I will agree that it can look unprofessional on a teachers forum. Perhaps I should take more care. Anyway, we could waffle on about such matters for ever, and compare qualifications, (and even writing credits) but this doesnt really answer the query.

Ill take on board the comments about my approach to posting ... have you experienced the problem Im asking about? Any ideas you could share with me? Im working with a new group now, and it hasnt happened as of yet ... but as the students in the 3 classes become more familiar with each other on breaks etc, perhaps it will occur again? The practicality of taking 3 different sets of lesson material has lost out to the risk of the kids 'mugging me off' again.

*My ellipsis use is non-standard. I have inherited this from MSN conversations with a graphic designer friend who uses MSN at work in a small, thin sidebar on his Mac .... Its often used as thinking space between clauses during our 'on the fly' conversations*

[Glenski]

[basiltherat]

[nickpellatt]

Its more about involving all the students in some kind of interaction with me, responding to prompts from me and the other students. The parts I reproduced here are similar to, but not an identical reproduction of the interaction that may happen in the class. Of course, I would prefer students to respond in sentences, but I am also careful not to leave the floor open for a single student to share an anecdote about Paris, a tall building etc.

Most of the interaction in these classes tend to be peer to peer, so I try to use the setting up time like a brainstorm, with lots of students free to make, and of course listen, to these contributions, which will then lead to the target language, topic etc. It tends to work quite well as it involves students with some quick fire speaking and thinking, and shakes the cobwebs away of the sleepier students.

The initial problem, which led to my post, was that one or two smart alec students were sharing the information with the other classes ... and as a result, were running through this setting up process ahead of the class, and the plan.

'You are going to ask X, so we talk about Y, and then it means we will listen to a CD about Z'. Its a part of my class that I believe is quite vital in setting up, waking up students, and getting as many involved in as short a time as possible ... its not perfect, but it has worked quite well for me. Classes are 90 minutes so I dont have time issues.

THANKFULLY, my current group hasnt done it at all ... so Im putting it down to a rogue group LOL