Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Clockout]

So you all know the situation: 40+ students in class, a passive co-teacher who would rather not be there.

Every time I try to do partner (or group) speaking exercises it usually results in total chaos after about 3 minutes because students know that it's hard for me to monitor them all at the same time.

-What type of speaking exercises work?

-Is it even possible to do successful speaking activities in regular 40+ student classes?

[Fishead soup]

Choral repetition is a good start. Have the whole class listen to you and then repeat. Then divide the class into pairs and have them do a roleplay.
Choral repetition doesn't have to be boring. You can play a Baam game from EFL 2.0. you can make variations of your own Baam game.

[thoreau]

[Fishead soup]

[kiwiinkorea]

It is possible to do it, but it is difficult to keep control of the students at the same time. It is a useful exercise as you get to speak to some of the students who will never speak out in class. It is very important to make sure they understand what they are doing before they start.

You can try making survey work into a competition. Tell them they have to interview friends and they do rock, paper, scissors to decide who gets to ask the questions and write down the answers. Then tell them that the student with the most answers is the winner. Watch for them lying about how many they have though!

I never give prizes to my winning students but they are really competitive so they still want to win.

[ddeubel]

It's not easy but can be done. You'll have to brush up on classroom management skills too.

This blog post of mine lists a lot of strategies for teaching speaking. Some resources there too... The Bailey video is very instructive.

You'll have to be courageous enough to give the students more autonomy and get yourself to step back and begin the process of the students taking responsibility and control over their own learning. Part of that is providing them with activities they can get a feeling of success with - so they see they are learning and accomplishing something.....

Also click SCC or Speaking / Conversation in the links at http://teachingrecipes.com for some ideas.

Cheers,

DD
http://eflclassroom.com

[winterfall]

Group Speaking activities don't seem to work at my school.

Very, very few of the kids can speak. Their inhibitions are high and they don't know how to sequence the words together. Their knowledge of English is exclusively mechanical. So they keep saying out of context statements. Like I say "Hi" and they say "I'm fine, how are you?"

They all "Learned" the basics but they don't know how to use them.

[Fishead soup]

http://eflclassroom.com

Look for the PPT from Side by Side on this site works awesome
You can break the monotony with some Baam

[Clockout]

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Fishead soup]

Peer dictation- Paste a full paragraph on the blackboard put students in groups. Tell them they must copy the paragraph. Put students in groups and have them race to finish the paragraph. Activity gets really noisy.
For higher level students check out the peer dictation activities by Andrew Finch in the Textbook Tell Me More Just google Finchpark.com This guys material is awesome.

[thoreau]

<<<deleted>>>

[Fishead soup]

This tends to go against the idea of English only teaching but sometimes you can get the co-teacher to translate the instructions on your handouts.

[AgDragon01]

I recently did the superhero thing
I ellicited the responses from my students first so I knew they understood. I put up a pic of superman, asked them who he was, asked them what his powers were and wrote them all on the board....For some reason my students get all excited when I write a list, so they start actually yelling out stuff. Then I ask them how he got his power, write it up on the board, then his weakness. I do the same for two more, so they get it, then explain that they have to do the same. I printed out a worksheet for them, since they respond to those more than just having a blank sheet of paper.
I tell them to 1) Come up with the superhero's powers 2) How he got them and 3) His weaknesses, 4) Draw the Hero, 5) Name him. I have it all on the worksheet clearly, but always have groups that weren't listening, so while I'm walking around monitoring I correct them, having the korean teacher explain it to slower groups. The only time I ask the Korean teacher to speak to them is when I've run out of options. I don't care if the groups speak in Korean.

Then after they've done that, I have them come up with a cartoon giving the full story of how the hero got his power. After they do that, they use the cartoon to help them write it in story form in English. While monitoring they usually ask me a ton of questions regarding vocabulary to pump into their story, and I correct any misspelled words or botched language that I see. That all usually takes the entire class.

If it doesn't I have the faster groups do the same thing (cartoon, then story) of the hero's last great fight with his nemesis.

I like for them to use creativity for language learning, I think it sticks with them more than anything else. Usually for speaking practice I try to focus on correcting really difficult mistakes usually dealing with conflation of consonants.

[wings]

I think that it is important to make sure that your kids know what is expected of them, and know what the consequences will be if they don't do a good job. It is always fun to end with a game, but this can lead to TOTAL madness. If you have a mingling activity planned tell them that after they finish there are 2 possible outcomes, I use a "happy teacher" vs. "angry teacher" scenario. First I tell and show them what I expect from them, then I tell them that after if I am a happy teacher we will watch a video (can be a 1 minute youtube clip) or that if I am an angry teacher we will have to write out all the sentences for homework. Instead of homework or a video, you can use this class to plan the next. They might not take it seriously, but when they act up one week and the next week you arrive and tell them. OK, well do you remember last week? Was I happy? NO! So today there is NO GAME etc. It might not work right away, but in the long run they will learn that they need to behave in your class or they won't be having fun next time.

I think it's important to NEVER say to your students "Do you understand?" Before an activity. Of course they will say yes, so it is a totally useless question. Ask them questions where they need to answer either yes/no or give you longer answers. I ask things like "I will give you a paper, do you write your name?"

It is totally possible to do mingling activities with your kids, I do them probably every other class, but you need to train them!

[nyenglish]

it might be too late because you already established a pattern with them, but this worked for me:

every class starts with a vocal warm-up 5-10 minutes...(closer to 5 is better just simple pronunciation pairs: sheep, sleep, please, cheese, i like cheese, etc..)
every class ends with a vocal cool-down (A:B conversation)

i broke them into groups of 5-6 during the first class, had them 'name' their groups (lots of 2n1s and Mild 7s)
i treat each group as '1' student, so i really only have 5 or six 'student groups' to teach...much more manageable

the warm-up is just pronunciation pairs, so i speak, then the whole class repeats
each class i choose a new group to 'run' the warm-up (after a few weeks of modeling it myself)

during the A:B conversation i'll model it, "okay teacher A: class B: GO!; okay, teacher: B, class: A GO!'

then,

"okay Mild 7: A, 2n1: B Go!" etc...

it works most of the time...sometimes it falls apart, but...it's pretty solid

as for the Korean...i let it go for translation, but when i want an English response, they must raise their hand and ask, "Can I speak in Korean" before talking to the co-teacher...

this works about 60% of the time