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lpw385
Joined: 29 Nov 2009
Location: Seoul
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 Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2011 5:28 am Post subject: Discussion questions from the past two years of teaching |
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| I've been teaching university students for about 2 years here in Korea and I just made a website with all of my discussion questions that I have used. I organised them into topic, grammar focus and textbook (sorry just Q: Skills 2, World English 2 and Impact Issues 1 so far). Anyways, there are about 700 discussion questions and I plan to add more in the future. These questions are mostly aimed at adult intermediate students but you might get by with using them with some advanced junior high or high school students. Definitely not for children, although some of the icebreakers might work with kids. If you think this might be some help to you and your class the website is www.eslconversationquestions.com. Sure it's a shameless self plug but I think it might help some folks. I wouldn't have posted this comment otherwise. |
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Skipperoo
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2011 5:51 am Post subject: |
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| Nice, thanks! Always good to have some fresh topics handed to me. |
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koreatimes
Joined: 07 Jun 2011
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2011 8:43 am Post subject: |
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Sounds like you have some good things to share. I have one question and a comment.
1. There are too many links to get to the actual page with the content. I think your front page should have the topics, and then all it should take is one click. I found myself ping ponging around a lot just to see 6 half lines of text.
2. How do you fill up a class hour with just a half dozen questions? If I were to ask these questions, either I get 3 year old stares or 1-2 sentence replies. What do you do to actually get them talking about the things you bring up? |
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lpw385
Joined: 29 Nov 2009
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:25 pm Post subject: |
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@Skipperoo: No problem, glad you like them and hope you find them useful!
@Koreatimes: Thanks for the feed back. I'm always keen on seeing what difficulties folks have with using the site. Plus who doesn't like talking about how they do things? I'll see if I can address your questions.
| koreatimes wrote: |
Sounds like you have some good things to share. I have one question and a comment.
1. There are too many links to get to the actual page with the content. I think your front page should have the topics, and then all it should take is one click. I found myself ping ponging around a lot just to see 6 half lines of text.
2. How do you fill up a class hour with just a half dozen questions? If I were to ask these questions, either I get 3 year old stares or 1-2 sentence replies. What do you do to actually get them talking about the things you bring up? |
1. I actually thought about putting the topics on the front page but figured the people looking for questions listed by grammar or people looking for icebreakers might get confused. If I put all the links up I thought it would look a bit slapdash. So I settled on putting direct links to all the content in the sidebar and direct links through the menus at the top. Perhaps I should put some direct links into the main content of the front page though.
2. This one gets a bit into my teaching methodology but I'll try not to make it too boring. First, these questions definitely aren't meant to take up a full hour of class. My general rule is 5 questions = 10 minutes give or take a bit depending on how good the students are. I've been trying to beef up all the posts of questions to 10 questions a post but it is a work in progress.
Usually I cover a grammar point in class as well as a general topic. Students practice the grammar in a structured way and then I try to get them to produce it in a more natural way through conversation questions. So I end up with some topic conversation questions and grammar conversation questions.
I put them into groups of 3 and tell them "Choose what ever questions you think are interesting, if none are interesting create your own. I don't care what you talk about as long as you speak in English." (I don't allow any Korean in my classroom and take off points if students aren't participating.) Usually students will start with a question (usually the first one) and discuss. Often they will get off topic in the course of their discussion, but that is how a natural conversation goes. They get back on topic when the conversation reaches an end and they choose another question.
If you are having a problem with none of them speaking after presenting the questions, they probably just don't want to be the first one to talk or they are reading the questions (I recommend walking them through the questions first so they know what to expect and what you expect. As well as clear up any questions). I usually make a joke of this when it happens, if there is 20-30 seconds I'll say "Aaaaannnd go!". You could also designate a student to choose the first question for the group.
Anyways, sorry for the novel, hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions or if I can help in any other way! |
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