class with no lust for life

Dr.J · Post by **Dr.J** » Tue May 25, 2004 7:08 am

I teach a weekly 2-hour class of around 5 middle aged to elderly Japanese students. All students are upper intermediate, but one is basic.

My problem is that whatever I do, they zone out within 20 minutes. They come to the class with some vague aim of learning English though I suspect that it is really to fill the empty space in their lives.

I am trying to think of ways to make English mean a little more to them because this class is starting to turn me into a listless zombie too.

Has anyone had similar experiences, and/or has any advice?

Thanks

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Tue May 25, 2004 2:19 pm

What do you do in a typical class? Do your students just speak English, or do you find they also speak a lot of Japanese? Do you teach in a "teacher-centered" way, doing most of the talking, or do you have them speak together in groups? Have you tried having them bring some things in to talk about? I know a lot of older Japanese ladies (I've had some in my classes) often have a lot of "hobbies" such as origami, making ribbon flowers and fish, etc. Could you have a cooking demonstration? A field trip? Ask them what they are interested in and use English while explaining to the others about it, and/or how to do it. If you give us some more ideas about what you do, maybe we'll have some suggestions.

strider · Post by **strider** » Tue May 25, 2004 2:58 pm

I agree with Lorikeet, if things are getting a bit stale, do something different, even radical!

I used to work for a training centre that used 'standard' texts and questions. As we had to use these texts, we found some very creative ways to use them. My favourite was to take a student out of the classroom and discuss the text and pose the questions as we walked around the training center, up the stairs, along the corridor, out in to the street, around the car park... At first, the students were terrified, then amused and finally they gained a huge amount of self confidence. Another method was to pose the questions to the group, then put the group together and get them to imagine what the text could be.

Why not do your next lesson outside the the classroom?

Dr.J · Post by **Dr.J** » Tue May 25, 2004 11:53 pm

Thanks for the ideas, I will try them out.

However, I am looking for something that will give them some deeper motivation for learning English.

They feel silly doing fun games, but they don't have enough motivation to take on the kinds of challenges that will really improve their English.

I am thinking along the lines of pen pals, or charity work, but focussed on spoken English.

Any advice?

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Thu May 27, 2004 9:53 am

You didn't say if they were women or men? What is wrong with coming to class to have a time out and meet with friends? People who are free during the day for whatever reason do this all the time to play card games, have caligraphy lessons, bowl, golf, etc. I think it is great that they are doing it with their English. When you go off for a golf game with your friends, you don't want to have any pressure of having some kind of test or having to read a book about how to do it. Nevertheless you might learn as new stroke or a better way to get out of the sand trap from your friend and you certainly will want to improve your score or keep it the same.
It helps if you have some way to show them that they are progessing or scoring. If they just keep coming and keep making the same mistakes, they will eventually get discouraged. At this age and stage there is a lot of fossilization as some people call it. There has been some research to show that if you tape them talking and get them to go over the tapes and try to point out their own mistakes, they will be more inclined to notice and perhaps be able to change. They certainly hear the mistakes of others easily and can feel good about finding those.
Having a real audience for their writing is so great and email pals and writing stories for their children and grandchildren or kids in other countries would be great. They can volunteer at the English classes at school too, taking a small group or one on one and you can spend sometime lesson planning as part of your lessons.
Try having a class at the local coffee house - it is amazing how much more relaxed they are and kind of proud to be speaking English.
People's lives are endlessly interesting so there should be some great stories in a group of four or five.
You can tape a CNN newscast - the shortest one with main headlines and watch and listen to that and then explain vocabulary and have a discussion. You might even be able to get the script from CNN by Internet. Certainly movies have subtitles and you can get the scripts from the Internet. Some of those scary movies are fun to watch and take apart.
When I taught these classes I changed my goals from teaching English to learning about the people and their lives but of course, since I didn't speak Japanese they had to explain in English. Once they do it for you, it is easier for the next person they meet.

Dr.J · Post by **Dr.J** » Fri May 28, 2004 5:20 am

Thanks for more ideas. I think measuring progress is a good point. English is different from golf because you can't see where you are making mistakes. (

That's what the teacher is for I suppose...)

djam43338 · Post by **djam43338** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 11:06 pm

I would suggest making the students be the teacher for a day. Give each of them an objective that they will have to teach to their classmates. This does 2 things: 1) they will have to focus on the material more to teach it, thus learning it better, 2) they will hopefully take the class more seriously as they become more interactice in a hands on way. I'd tell them they need to use visual aids as well.

I liked the suggestion given above, having them deomonstrate hobbies - keep it student-oriented, making it relevant to them. Hope this helps.

Glenski · Post by **Glenski** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 7:15 am

Dr.J,
Could you describe a typical class? Perhaps the problem is the students motivation. Perhaps it is the lesson format.

The most important thing is to know what their goals are. You wrote "They come to the class with some vague aim of learning English", but is that all you know about their reasons for taking a private lesson?

Moreover, a 2-hour class is pretty darned long. Why are you doing this?

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 4:42 pm

Glenski wrote: Moreover, a 2-hour class is pretty darned long. Why are you doing this?

Heh. All our regular classes are two hours a day, five days a week. The special classes that are only one hour seem very short to me now!

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 10:35 am

All my group conversation classes in Japan were two hours long. It seems that you need that much time to get them going and once they are going to get them to stop. It helps if you have a kind of routine, especially at the beginning to entice them to come on time. I used to bring in the photos of our previous class and just show them for the beginning 5 or 10 minutes and get them to remember what we had done or where we had been. If we hadn't been out the last class, I brought in some photos of my family or activities and showed those. I tried to get pictures of something similar in Canada - if we went to see a kindergarten, I got pictures of kindergartens. If we went to see a temple, I got pictures of churches and then we talked about the differences. After 10 minutes or so I would put them away and wouldn't let the late ones see them until after class. We usually had one class in the school and one class out, in turn. We made up a photo album and labelled the pictures with quite long group stories. Then they would show anything they brought or tell us about what events were coming up and we would decide what to see the next week. I had all the English tour guides and each one would read something about the sight we had chosen and add their own information (usually much better). At the end, I would give them something "academic". A cloze exercise from the group story, or comprehension questions, crossword, word scramble, vocabulary test, dictations, translation exercises and so on. Our school always served coffee or tea during the classes with small biscuits and of course, the ladies often brought the treat of the season (sure miss those red bean cakes). A trip didn't have to be far. We once went next door to the tax office. They were just always amazed how many of their fellow countrymen could speak English and how well. They often arranged the visits with telephone calls or appointments and so on and of course, can often get into the museums with a cousin on the day it is normally closed and so on. What a way to spend your time and be paid for it.

flowerfreshgirl · Post by **flowerfreshgirl** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:38 am

Definitely like the idea of having students bring in physical objects to "show and tell." You could make it thematic and just spend a few minutes at the beginning of class getting your students thinking in English (over foodstuffs, flowers, photo albums, what have you). Especially good if you don't want to leave the classroom: you can bring the outside world in. I think all teachers in Japan face the same problem as you when it comes to teaching adults. In jr high and high school here kids learn that English is about the grammar and it's boring as hell. Guess it's up to us gaijin to show them otherwise.

Ganbatte!

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 5:26 am

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Lots of games needn't make anybody feel silly. My favourite of the moment is based on a British TV show, Blockbusters, where teams have to make their way across a grid formed from hexagons. The hexagons will have letter clues in them, such as "JB" and you give a clue, such as "a popular xmas song" (jingle bells). One team tries to go horizontally across the board, the other vertically. Staid Korean adults love that.