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[my_way]

Hi all.....I'm teaching private lessons and have a new student who is upper-intermediate level and wants to practice mainly conversation; writing is her second focus.
Can anyone recommend a good text. I have looked at Kinokuniya, and there is a pretty good series called 'Commication Strategies'. I have used this book before, but my problem with these 'conversation' books is that while they offer a topic and some vocab, there is so much reading involved.
Any other ideas?
Thanks

[fluffyhamster]

Books on the grammar of speech, and discourse and/or conversation analysis, might give you some ideas. Google Books has previews for most of the following:

Bilbrough's Dialogue Activities
Carter & McCarthy's Exploring Spoken English
Carter & McCarthy's Cambridge Grammar of English
Carter, Hughes & McCarthy's Exploring Grammar in Context
McCarthy's Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers
Brown & Yule's Teaching the Spoken Language
Hatch's Discourse and Language Education
Thornbury & Slade's Conversation: From Description to Pedagogy
Eggins & Slade's Analyzing Casual Conversation
Biber et al's The Longman Grammar of Spoken & Written English
Advanced learner dictionaries e.g. (the paper copy of the) COBUILD has useful 'Pragmatics' labelling
Stuff on lexical syllabuses:
http://rdues.uce.ac.uk/publ/Lexical_Syllabus.pdf ; http://www.cels.bham.ac.uk/resources/LexSyll.shtml
Lewis's The Lexical Approach etc

Also, perhaps try searching the Teacher Discussion forums of Dave's for Carter & McCarthy, and Thornbury (of Dogme fame) for some posts by me (and others) regarding 'approaches' to teaching conversation.

[Mr_Monkey]

Those are certainly good books, although I fear there may not be much in the way of immediate practical application for the teacher, apart from the Thornbury stuff, which is usually excellent.

Why is your student studying English?

[fluffyhamster]

Interesting that you haven't recommended much yourself in the way of 'immediate practical application', Mr Monkey! As for the student's reasons for studying English, I suspect they are quite "general" - 'To be able to at least chat, make conversation' - so any 'Needs Analysis' could draw a bit of a blank. Best thing (OP) is get a book that is mainly "grammar-dialogue" (Streamline, Side by Side, Interchange, Whatever - Communication Strategies sounds more like group discussion/debate preparation than true conversational material!) as back-up/further practice/homework/occasional lead-in whilst aiming to cover all that it contains and more (by searching for potentially better exemplars in grammars, dictionaries etc) in a series of conversatons that at first you lead (the student then is invited to notice salient points, listen several times, murmur them quietly back to themselves, then repeat them after you at a gradually increasing volume and pace, build up the length of phrases and talk-turns etc. Obviously the drilling can be a lot less if the student is reasonably fluent and just needs to get an ear for a specific turn of phrase or two. The most important thing is that the student relate a similar inform/report/anecdote to the one you told her (i.e. that the roles are seen to be, and more importantly, heard reversed!). Help her write longer turns out if necessary, a phrase or at most a clause per line (forget sentences beginning with a capital letter and ending with a full stop after stretching over lines!), perhaps rewriting from rough audio recordings, and don't be scared to build up a collection of good joint dialogues that can be recalled, re-practised, re-recorded etc (the re-recording could serve as testament to increased fluency and confidence).

[my_way]

Thanks for the books and info....I will definitely take a look.
The information you have given me is really technical and hard for me to understand to be honest.
I have been teaching many years, but mostly at the Elementary level. Recently, I became tired of all the crap that goes along with a regular job, and decided to teach privately. I have about 6 students, and only 2 want to use a book.
I have never studied teaching formally, though I am not ignorant to methods, philosophies, etc.
This student is the highest level I have taught. She can hold a conversation well, has a good grasp of grammar and structure, has lived abroad and works for a university.
She has to write emails in English, and occasionally papers but has told me she wants to concentrate on speaking in our lessons.
I am familiar with Side by Side, so maybe I'll have a look at the more advanced books in the series.
I just want her to be satisfied, and I hope to learn something in the process as well, so thanks for the teaching ideas.....
Any other info. welcomed.....thanks!

[my_way]

[fluffyhamster]

Heh, sorry MW, I meant that teachers themselves prepare and sketch out some potential conversations (some "talking points", "linguistic items", or "seeds" at least) before class, then once in class initiate and try to demonstrate those conversations before helping the student create similar ones. And I should've said 'perhaps rewriting from rough audio recordings that you've made with or for the student' (I had got myself a stereo recording walkman).

For example, Interchange3* IIRC had a dialogue about a guy returning to his belongings in a gym's changing room and realizing that his wallet had been stolen (the purpose of the dialogue was to contextualize and lead into practice of 'Past Perfect'). I decided to leave the book until later however and introduce into the 1-2-1 chat something that had happened to me years before but that I pretended had been only the previous weekend - how I'd been on a date "when a guy came up and told me to leave the cafe!" (Student starts wondering whatever for, as I explain how the ensuing "slight altercation" effectively ended the date, but how I got a phone call later that night...). Yup, you guessed it, the girl (I'd dated) had broken up with this guy not too long before and he was obviously still sore about it, especially after spotting her out so soon with another guy (or maybe she'd used me to get at him? LOL!).

Anyway, the context I provided was probably "simpler" (active rather than passive), more actively told/tellable/person-able than a book's dialogue could ever be, and dare I say it more interesting and thought-provoking, more involving, and I could've possibly contrasted the tale's discourse structure with a plain simple past very boring (and thus functionally quite strange!) straight run-through ("A girl broke up with her boyfriend...then she had a date with me") if timelines, highlighting of the past perfect form etc hadn't helped. But the student seemed to get the idea of the "flashback" and general dramatic tension and interest (the listener guessing game) that apparently witholding it could generate. Then, somewhat later I reminded the same student of the story when we were doing (partial) third conditional work: Do you remember that date story I told you? What did I say...the surprising thing, remember? Yup, it was, "So we were sitting there talking when suddenly this guy came up and said 'Get out!'". Well, you (as the listener) could use this new language point there, for example: "I'd've called the police, or at least the manager!" etc. (What the listener would or wouldn't've done is obviously an unreality, hence the conditional usage).

Or you know when students apparently need some item of vocabulary that you hadn't anticipated? Well, imagine if you had been browsing dictionaries and (lexico)grammars so much that you had anticipated some of these useful items even before the students had shown the (note that I didn't say a/"random"!) need for them; at the very least, we must give whatever unanticipated needs further thought and make sure that we develop something better "after the fact". For example (not that this is such a great example!), when I showed a student a family photo, and explained as I was doing so that I was an identical twin (I paraphrased and then translated), the student then had an idea (I could see her eyes light up): she began, "In school...your teachers...did...they...ask...'Are you...Stephen?" (my brother's name). Now, that was successful communication from her in that context, but thinking about it further I decided not to leave the "teaching" at that and sometime later introduced the idea of "telling" (="discerning"): telling things apart or from one another, "telling A from B", being able to tell A from B, not confusing A with B, etc etc (all versus simply knowing or more or less immediately seeing that something is A not B, in which case there is no need to remark on the fact!). In short, I "recognized" an "opportunity" to introduce and teach something "extra": a meaning of 'tell' beyond its usual "verbal reporting" function.

*The students' possible aversion to having any sort of book doesn't mean that you can't use any to help provide YOU with some sort of supporting structural framework during lesson planning/preparation...but like I say, you should be aiming to go beyond whatever book(s) by providing plenty of hand-picked, potentially better vocab and linguistic items, contexts etc.

[Mr_Monkey]

[fluffyhamster]

The CEF (previewable on Google Books: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PygQ8Gk4k4YC& ) is undoubtedly worth looking at (especially for anyone new to designing a series of lessons), but it still doesn't quite grasp the nettle of what is to be supplied (studied etc) in terms of detailed, fine-grained linguistic content, for which stuff like the COBUILD Grammar Patterns 1: Verbs ( http://www.cels.bham.ac.uk/resources/ > https://arts-ccr-002.bham.ac.uk/ccr/patgram/ ) could be really useful. (But obviously it helps where possible to place lexis in larger discourse, contexts and ultimately tasks, such as the emails that the student has expressed an interest in writing, and in the two books you�re recommending on that subject, Mr Monkey!). I guess what I'm trying to say here is (more) top-downish is convenient and all, but let's not forget that continuing bottom-up research can be very interesting, useful and productive for the teacher at least ('cos one is then looking at things on an item-by-item basis and considering a wider range of contexts than any one mass-produced textbook usually provides).

This might also be of interest (in the general context of this thread i.e. "teaching conversation"):
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=7543

[my_way]

Wow..there is a lot of info here....thank you both for taking the time to post, it will be very helpful.
FH....you're right about 'Communication Strategies' it is more for group lessons. I took a look at Interchange and it seems to be a very useful book, so maybe that's what we will start with.
Do you recommend buying the teacher's books with these texts?
I have a copy of Ebglish Grammar in Use, so I will use this for more examples, etc....
As for her specific reasons for wanting to concentrate on speech, I have asked and all I got was that she wants to keep up her level while improving.I really dont think she has a specific reason other than that.
I looked over the assessment posted by MM, and I do think she is upper-intermediate.
So, I need to get the ball rolling with this woman and see what happens.....thanks again for all the info!

[fluffyhamster]

Hi again MW! I was hoping to be able to still direct you to CUP's website to look at their supplementary/supporting resources for teachers using particular CUP ELT textbook titles, but now they only have 'Featured resources' (i.e. a limited and rather threadbare selection of supporting stuff) - guess the recession was biting, but still, a bit mean and stingy of them to remove pretty much anything free! But you can still get at least some idea of what Interchange is like in specific details by clicking on the left-hand 'Scope and Sequence' link and the 'Interchange Teacher Support Site' links on the following webpage (be warned however that the redesigned site generally is now agonizingly slow): http://www.cambridge.org/gb/elt/catalogue/subject/project/custom/item2506107/Interchange-Interchange-Teacher-Support-Site/?currentSubjectID=382379

So now it's OUP who is the (inadvertent) leader in support for teachers using (or thinking of using) their titles (i.e. their site's still pretty much as it was when CUP used to be the better one!). Follow the 'American English Adult' and 'British English Adult' links, and then the 'Teacher's site' links given at the bottom of each title's individual page, to get access to a range of hopefully still quite useful resources (you'll need to register).
http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/?cc=gb

OUP does also have Student sites whose contents are accessible without the need to join up, but such stuff probably won't be detailed (non-random) enough or of a high enough level for you or your student to really benefit from it.

[Insubordination]

Face 2 Face

Cambridge A-Z Discussions (Int level seems to be almost upper Int)