Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ilovebdt]

Hi Guys

I am doing winter conversation classes at my school at the moment and I am at a bit of a loss as to how to run them.

Each day I have questions about a different topic for the students to discuss and I either ask the questions or get a student to pick a question to answer. Sometimes, I just let the students volunteer, but they don't do it willingly.

It's ok, but a bit boring.

I could get them to work in pairs, but then they don't/won't talk in English to each other.

Does anyone have any ideas how to jazz the class up?

I really want to build their fluency and get everyone to speak as much as possible because they don't get the opportunity to talk much in their regular classes of 40 students

ilovebdt

[ChuckECheese]

If it's "Talking Class" that I'll have to teach for "Free", I wouldn't really care.

But if it's adult class, talk about "sex". That'll get them very excited and start talking.

[ilovebdt]

Thanks for that.
I teach high school students at quite a conservative school, so "sex" isn't really an appropriate topic.

Any other suggestions?

ilovebdt

[trinity24651]

How about movie stars/musicians?

[babtangee]

"Free Talking Class" is usually the boss' code for, "I'm too cheap to buy a text book, but want to charge these people money for a class anyway, so you entertain them." If you have a book, you should be encouraging them to talk about the material within. If you don't have a text, insist on one. Otherwise check the many games threads on this board. There are dozen of games that make students talk.

[spliff]

I always pair them off and give them conversation questions or humorous newspaper or Internet stories. Free talking classes are time the students speak, every minute the teacher speaks is one less they can. Introduce the activity as quickly as possible and set them on the task. Tell them if they have a question to feel free to ask. Save some time at the end of the class to discuss the lesson in a large group. Also, free talking students should have fluency, make sure that there aren't any in the class that can't do the work.

[oneofthesarahs]

Or have brief little paragraphs to read together to get the ball rolling. I'm teaching an atrocious textbook called "Modern Topics" to a group of middle school students. One of the units was devoted to fishing, which none of them cared about at all. So I printed off some articles about noodling* from the Internet. After reading that article, we had a long, very fun discussion about whether they would "noodle" or not, and other stupid things that people do. Keep it light and fun, otherwise they'll space out.

Or, if you want to be really lazy, just let a different student be the "teacher" each day. They pick the topic and run the discussion.











*catching catfish with your bare hands! Highly dangerous and stupid, but entertaining.

[cosmo]

Author: Don La Bonte

Publisher: Tower Press Books 탑출판사

Titles: La Bonte's English Conversation Topics
Conversational English For Koreans
English Conversation Topics For Koreans
Advanced English Conversation Topics
English Conversation Workbook For Koreans
Free Conversation Topics

[ajuma]

[Atavistic]

I'm not sure of their levels, but there are some books titled

The Book of Questions
The Kids' Book of Questions
The Book of Question, Love and Sex

by Gregory Stock. I think there's also one about business, politics, and money.

When I taught fifth grade I kept the Kids' Book in my room. More than 200 questions ranging from silly ("If your father dyed his hair green and then wanted to go to the mall with you what would you do?") to more serious topics ("Of all the things you've been told about God, what do you believe?"). I made a number chart and each day one student crossed a number off and that question was read. That was their optional journaling question.

Obviously you wouldn't want to do this every day, but it looks like each of those titles can be ordered from What the Book for less than 8,000 won, so it might not be a bad investment.

Actually, I've lost several copies of the original Book of Questions. People kept borrowing it and never returning it.