Teacher Discussion Forums

hi all, i'm teaching a foreign affairs class in japan. i would like to know if anybody has passed by a site that might have some lessons i could down load or if you have some personal lessons that you would be willing to share. my students range from beginner to lower intermediate, so i've had problems trying to produce a lesson that would accomodate the different levels.
thanks in advance

Here are a few sites with foreign affairs related lessons:

http://www.onestopenglish.com/Culture/l ... essons.htm

http://www.onestopenglish.com/tefl_skills/reading.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/ilp/index ... TopicID=70

http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/worldhis.html

http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/constudies.html

The links at www.armchairdiplomat.com/links.htm are amazing. You can find a lot of good material here for teaching foreign affairs. (Rossi's book is also highly recommended.)


If you want to generate discussions, here are a few approaches that have worked for me in the past:

1) Choose a topic for discussion and present it as a question. Divide the students into two groups, the first group will think of PRO arguments, and the other group will come up with CON arguments. (It might work better if you have them do this for homework.) Briefly review ways of disagreeing and giving counter-arguments (Well, I'm not sure I agree with that...). Put students into pairs, one student from each group. Tell them they will discuss the issue, with the first student giving an argument, and the second one giving another argument that expresses another opinion. Make sure they use the expressions you showed them earlier. Then have a group discussion on which arguments were the best and which were the worst.

2) Ask students to come up with a topic they would like to discuss. Narrow down the issue so everyone is clear what the discussion is going to be about. Then ask each student to give you a PRO statement for the issue. When this is finished, each student must produce a CON statement. Tell them they will discuss these arguments in the next lesson. Copy down all of their arguments and after class type them up, adding some new arguments both PRO and CON. (You can ask them to read up on the topic for homework.) In the next class period, pass out copies of the list and ask them to guess which ones you added. Then read the items out one by one, and ask students to comment on each argument. Insist that each student contribute to the discussion.

3) After the students have read an article, write QUESTIONS and COMMENTS in big letters up on the board. Encourage students to go up and write their questions and comments about the article on the board.


http://www.eslflow.com/debateanddiscussionlessons.html has a lot more links and ideas for doing discussions and debates in class.

For more ESL ideas and activities, go to www.geocities.com/allhou/lessgames.htm