Job Discussion Forums

[tomaschonnie]

ive got a 20 minute demo lesson on Monday aimed at adults. here's the guidelines i received from the prospective employer

The demo (as mentioned) should not be interactive. It should be for elementary or pre-intermediate level students. You can decide on any grammar point you like (present simple, forming simple questions, using adjectives, etc.) and it need be only 20 minutes in duration

im quite keen to do a good job on this as it's a good school and well-located. any advice/tips to help me produce a tight and coherent demo lesson?

[1st Sgt Welsh]

PM sent.

[I'm With Stupid]

What exactly do they mean by "should not be interactive?"

[tomaschonnie]

he means that the teachers acting as the audience for the demo lesson don't want to be answering questions on the present simple or writing or doing pairwork etc. fair enough. it means that i will just present lots of information, i think.

[1st Sgt Welsh]

[tomaschonnie]

i agree totally but like you said, it's their show. i'll give them what they want. i really appreciate your PM, by the way

[Jbhughes]

Have to say, I also don't agree with teaching a passive audience, however as you say, it's their call.

Here's one idea, not sure what you or experienced hirers would think:

Why don't you treat it more as a presentation of how you would teach a class, rather than an actual lesson? You could prepare something like an hour lesson and 'teach' it, skipping over all of the communicative parts - informing the 'class' that normally for the next x minutes they would do such and such, before moving on. You could slip out of teacher mode for a couple of sentences and say something like 'and now the sts would talk in pairs about their holiday plans for 5 minutes' or whatever before immediately skipping on to the next task.

You never know, they might even decide that they do want to join in!

I still don't know how I would fill in the gaping holes left by not drilling structures or eliciting anything but at least this way you would be showing them that your lessons are communicative. What does anyone do with grammar for 20minutes anyway? You could practice a grammar point in that time, only they don't want the 'sts' to do anything.

You could provide a full lesson plan to show them in more detail what the sts would be doing (interaction types included) and your reasons for choosing the type of activity. You could also detail what you would be doing during each activity.

I suppose the only risk is that they honestly want to watch you lecture something to 'test your explanation skills' or something similarly nonsensical-seeming. Another problem is that you would need to make it very clear to them that for part of the lesson you are 'teaching' and another part you are explaining what would happen in a normal class. If I was to go with this approach, I would probably have markedly different postures or locations in the classroom to represent the different 'modes', for example sitting or at the board for 'teaching' and standing to the side and away from the board for explaining.


Anyway, just an idea. 20 minutes of teaching without students? What the hell. Good luck.

[tomaschonnie]

[Jbhughes]

I meant 'a 20 minute condensed version of a 60 minute lesson' with all the interactive parts accounted for but skipped over.

What your potential employers are looking for or what you choose are of course up to you.

Rereading my suggestion - it might be a bit 'out there', would depend on the employer.

Anyway - good luck!

[tomaschonnie]

thanks

i shall report back fyi.

[tomaschonnie]

did the demo. grammar lesson. very technical. no interaction whatsoever. they seemed to like it.