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pangaea
Joined: 20 Dec 2007
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 Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:25 pm Post subject: Tips for 1-1 conversation class? |
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| I have a conversation class with one student once a week and I am having a hard time coming up with an interesting lesson plan. I think she is in grade 1 in high school. She is very sweet and somewhat shy. I have a book to use but I think the book is really just so I have something to work with and I don't necessarily have to stick to it like glue. I have done some lessons on the material in the book and some without. It has some useful stuff, like sections on partitives and countable/non-countable nouns, but I find the dialogues in the book to be awkward and not all that helpful. I have given her a few writing assignments to write and present, which seemed to go well, and I spend some time on conversation, but there are only so many times I can ask about school, careers, and friends before it gets repetitive. I would love some ideas for games, activities, or other assignments that would be useful at her level. |
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Chet Wautlands
Joined: 11 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:30 pm Post subject: |
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She'll benefit greatly from as much natural conversation a possible. I would find out what shes interested in a have her talk about it. Research and ask her a few questions about it.
Teach her a few fun, cool expressions she can use regularly.
"I think that's kinda lame."
"I get what you're saying!"
Just some ideas. When I study Korean, that's what I like to do. |
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edwardcatflap
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 2:42 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
She'll benefit greatly from as much natural conversation a possible. I would find out what shes interested in a have her talk about it. Research and ask her a few questions about it.
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Definitely
| Quote: |
Teach her a few fun, cool expressions she can use regularly.
"I think that's kinda lame."
"I get what you're saying!"
Just some ideas. When I study Korean, that's what I like to do. |
I'd say be careful. Just because it's what you like to do doesn't mean it's the best thing for her.
The second expression might be useful if you were teaching her conversation techniques such as backchanneling or if you were teaching her a more colloquial variation on the verb 'to understand'. The first phrase, however, looks like the kind of thing you would teach as a chunk but might be inappropriate. Look at the form and function. Not being North American, I'm not sure of the exact nuance of the phrase but I believe the function is to criticise. If you're going to teach structures for criticising it's a much better idea to play it safe and make them as polite as possible. E.g. 'What did you think of the film?' 'I've seen better.'
The form is a contraction of 'kind of,' which opens up other problematic areas of pronunciation and register. Until students reach a very high level, they have a lot of difficulty pronouncing contractions like these naturally in speech and additionally often have problems with knowing the right register for the right occasion. Bearing in mind your student in the future will probably be conversing with another non-native speaker e.g. in emails to foreign companies at work or on holiday in Thailand etc.. it's generally best to avoid slang and/or regional variations of speech. Students continually clamour to learn phrases like this or idioms but they nearly always produce them in the wrong situation or with very unnatural pronunciation.
As I mentioned in another thread, IMO one of the things Korean students are poor at conversatonally is asking questions. Teach them things to ask people in different situations to get them away from the old favourites like 'do you like Korean food, can you use chopsticks? Do you speak Korean?'' Also get them to produce question tags more - 'You're a student aren't you', and understand the positive and negative ones. And teach them how to use synonyms naturally - it's cold today isn't it, 'yes it is, it's freezing etc....As well as what Chet mentioned above. |
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