Teacher Discussion Forums

HELP -- I am teaching conversational English to 14-16 year-olds in China, and this is only my 2nd week. I have never taught ESL before, and I love the experience, however I just found out 2 hours ago that all teachers will be teaching classes this weekend before the National Day holiday next week. To make matters worse, I am sick, and all I really want/need to do is sleep. Does anyone have any activities they can share for a classroom of 60 adolescent Chinese kids for 45 minutes? Keep in mind that they do not like to volunteer to speak in class -- it's like pulling teeth! Thank you for any help you can provide!

p.s. I do have a great activity which I will post in the next day or two for just this type of situation also.

sounds almost exactly like me.
not to happy about them only giving me two days notice I'm teaching on the weekend, but hey.
you can try baseball, split the class into groups, and ask questions, 4 questions right gets a point, 3 wrong there out.
only problem is you usuayly have to ask the questinons, cause the kids suck at it.

Try these links for some easy activities:

http://www.hltmag.co.uk/mar01/teach.htm

http://www.hltmag.co.uk/mar02/ex.htm

http://www.hltmag.co.uk/jan02/teach.htm

http://www.hltmag.co.uk/oct99/ex.htm

http://www.hltmag.co.uk/may02/teach.htm

Hi, try some of the free sample games from the site
http://www.eslgames.com/edutainment/games.html