Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Rock]

Any one out there no how to teach conversations in-an exciting way-from a book? What are some activities or methods you could use to make this more teachable rather than just listening and repeating?

[the_beaver]

[waterbaby]

Get yourself some big fluffy dice, no matter how much it goes against your "cool" tendencies, and roll it. (You don't have to keep it dangling from your rear view mirror).

Roll the dice (or get some students to) and count around the room to find their next narrator/perormer(s).

Even tho' it's repeating stuff, I found that it kept the students interested because they never knew who was reading next, so they were focused on who was reading, where they were up to.

It caused a lot of commotion and fun if the person who read got to roll the dice to decide who had to practice the dialogue next.

[redbird]

[quote="waterbaby"]Get yourself some big fluffy dice, no matter how much it goes against your "cool" tendencies, and roll it. (You don't have to keep it dangling from your rear view mirror).

Roll the dice (or get some students to) and count around the room to find their next narrator/perormer(s).
quote]

Nothing wrong with that approach at all, but for students who are having trouble learning, you may actually get better results from letting students know what passage they'll have to read out loud. Some students may need to practice the passage in their heads several times.

[Lizara]

If you have time, one thing that I've found that's really helpful (and that my students LOVE) is having them change parts of the dialogue. For instance, there's one in one of our books with a waiter and a customer, and the waiter says, "Can I take your order?" and the customer answers, and then they talk about drinks and so on. You'll have to help them out a bit at first, maybe write it on the board, erase one part, and ask what else you could say there, but once they get the hang of it they have a lot of fun and I like that they're actually thinking and speaking English instead of just reciting.

So usually I start by writing it on the board, explaining any difficult words, having everyone read together and then ask some comprehension questions and help with difficult pronunciations. Then I get them to take turns reading different parts (let them volunteer or pick students depending on how eager they are) and then I suggest some changes and let them play with that for a while.

[agraham]

That works well. There's a series called English 21 which has conversations that have underlined parts, and sidebars with replacement words and clauses. It's a good series, especially because the the low-level books in the series are good for students who are not advanced enough to come up with thier own replacement text. (Also I find creativity in the classroom is unnatural for them, so it takes a month to ease them into coming up with thier own text even if they have the skills.)

[JacktheCat]

I'm teaching my high school kiddies through a book called A Conversation Book: English in Everyday Life, which is all pair-work dialogues, role plays, and everyday vocab. This book is great, because all of the stuff in it relates to the students' everyday lives and they can actually see the usefullness of the material

I start off the lesson by modeling the vocab, eliciting meaning, and showing proper pronuncitation. Next I run through the day's dialouge or role play. Then I randomly choose a pair of victims, err volunteers and have them model out the dialouge\role play for the rest of class. Then I have the class break into pairs or groups to pratice the dialogue or role play while I walk around the class correcting them and waking up the slackers. (the key to group work is to assign each member a position: leader, recorder, English cop, etc). Afterwards, I have them report back to class their findings.

And, oh yeah, try to throw in as much humour as possible and keep them laughing.

[crazylemongirl]

I do dialogue lesson one in every three lessons. With my little first years it's easy. we go over some key concepts or prounciations.

Then we run through the dialogue. Once is a listen and repeat. Next time I take a part and vice versa. Then break up the class into teams according to their rows. From there we have a competion to declarce the winners. this gives them all a chance to yell and scream.I teach boys so any element of comepetition is needed to make learning fun.

Also for reading by themsleves I operate a volunteer or vicitm approach. The kids can volunteer (which may earn candy) or they are 'killed' by the last person to speak and thus have to speak next. It's a good way to ensure that you get a good spread of people. My students love dropping eachother into the hot seat.

[Badmojo]

You got to make the impersonal text personal. I second the suggestion to change the dialogue to suit their own information.

Another Interchange technique is when they practice the conversation, they must Look Up and Say. There should be no reading with their noses in the books, instead they must look up at their partner when they deliver the lines. I find that to be much better than mindless repetition.

But maybe the most important part of the conversation exercises is the listening, if you have the tape or CD. Write down a few questions and tell them to listen for the answers. I think that is their main point.