Teaching adult ESL for the first time

baihe71110 · Post by **baihe71110** » Wed May 30, 2007 2:55 am

I also come from China, but I am still a senior student now in the university. At the same time, I am a tutor for a young boy. Actually, I often worry about how to start my mini class.
But after several times, I found a simple rule: keeping smile all the time

and being patient.

readme123456 · Post by **readme123456** » Thu May 31, 2007 7:44 am

This Tuesday I made my presentation for the class. It turned out to be not as good as I planned. I feared my presentation will be too complicated or too boring, so I was maybe too serious with it. Today the students will make their presentation drafts and we'll try to correct their mistakes together.
Then I plan to have a little debate, and maybe try some new tongue twisters, if there's time.

readme123456 · Post by **readme123456** » Thu May 31, 2007 3:14 pm

Today students presented their presentations' outlines. Then we tried several tongue twisters ("I sank you and you thanked me."). We also had a discussion on why there are so many road accidents involving bicycles in China. Teams gave their reasons in turns and got points in return. Then I took Craig's 'Ninjas vs. Pirates' topic, and it was the bomb. Next lesson we will have 2 presentations, I want students to first ask additional questions on the presentations' topics and then correct their classmates' mistakes.

What else should I plan for the next classes?

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Thu May 31, 2007 4:02 pm

How about constructive criticism instead of correcting mistakes. I fear that if you set up a situation where they point out mistakes that by the time you get to the more sensitive students they will be away on the presentation night. I think asking them more questions on the topic is a good idea and will help extend the project. We used to give the students the list of things that were part of a good presentation which I understand that you have done already and then compliment the students on the parts they did particularly well. We didn't point out mistakes or areas they could improve because they saw these in the presentations of others. It kept the mood positive and supportive.

How about a game to get them up and moving - a questionnaire they have to fill out by asking their peers questions - put in things you now know about the students, who has travelled outside of your town or city, who has spoken to a celebrity, who has a pet dog or cat, and so on. They have to talk to another person, put their name in one category and then move on. One person call fulfill more than one category of course. Then you can discuss the categories and find out how many have pets and so on.

Of you can do a hunt for objects in the room as teams. Make a list of objects - the more bizarre the better. I used to visit a $1 store and look in the kitchen equipment for unusual tools. Hide the objects around the room or chose something in a picture that isn't too obvious. They are not allowed to touch anything so the objects have to be in view somehow. They should whisper so that the other teams won't know what they found and where. They have to write down where they found the objects.

readme123456 · Post by **readme123456** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 1:41 am

Looking for things in the room is something we played in my Chinese class, I'll try it.
I also think that correcting mistakes has many disadvantages, it takes a lot of time and seems not to be useful and can make students uncomfortable; so, yes, better for others to ask interesting questions.

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 3:18 pm

We also played another game but have forgotten the name. You set up chairs in rows facing each other so with ten students you would have five on each side. You sit at the end of the rows as time keeper. The people on your right are talkers and have to talk about the topic that you give them for 2 minutes without stopping. The people on the left are listeners and don't talk at all except to encourage the talkers and provide a word if they get stuck. You can have serious and/or funny topics like the debates. All the talkers talk at the same time so is noisy. When two minutes is up, the right row moves one seat down and the last person comes to the front near you so they are talking to different people. The left side never moves. The people on the right talk on the same topic for all five people but don't have to say the same thing each time although they can perfect it if they want. Then you can ask the listeners what things they would like to review, what was the thing that struck them about the answers to the topic that were funny or helpful or they disagreed with and so on. Keep the time carefully because this makes things move along and more fun.

readme123456 · Post by **readme123456** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 9:50 am

Last time we had students helping each other choose a topic for next presentation. This lesson I had a lot of unplanned free time, so I tried several new activities. The speakers-listeners game was boring, everybody said. I think they didn't understand what's the point of it, maybe it was too hard for their level. Then we played 'End of Story', where they have to come up with a story that has the ending I give them. Also they tried to say words that start with the other word's last letter.
I want to have one lesson covering some business English, maybe have a 'meeting' in the classroom, hand out sheets with phrases categorized in 'giving a response', 'interrupting', 'disagreeing/agreeing' , etc., so that they can talk to each other in the way proper for a meeting.

As usual, I look forward to any ideas, suggestions on new activities.

Thank you

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 4:08 pm

My sister-in-law did this - held a pretend business meeting in the class. She handed out cards with roles on them. Someone was CEO, Vice President, sectrary, and so on. She wrote out a little scene on each card. The President was to pretend to be mad at one of the participants and have to correct them - you could include phrases he/she might use to make a point and not have the person lose face. One of the employees was threatening to quit. One of the department heads told an inappropriate joke. A journalist broke into the meeting and started asking potentially embarrassing questions. The group played out the roles and then discussed what might have been said. She said it was really fun as people got into their roles and very informative as they discovered ways of saying things that might work in those situations. She thought the participants would be really for almost anything. The students brought up many situations from their own experiences as well.

readme123456 · Post by **readme123456** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 7:52 am

We agreed to have a business meeting class on Tuesday. Today there will be a debate about housing in China, whether it's better to rent or own. We decided on this topic together beforehand, so I hope everyone will be a little more prepared with their arguments.

Please always feel free to share any idea for class here. As you have seen, I've already used all activities and games that you posted here.

Thanks

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 4:40 pm

How about writing up some of the debates that have taken place, pros and cons in poster form and placing them around the room. You can choose one person to stand beside each poster to explain the arguments and add any comments that people moving around the room can add. The poster presenters could write their additions on the board or paper beside the poster so you have a chance to correct before adding the statment to the poster. This will give you a chance to talk about errors and ways of making the arguments more powerful. You can even rank the arguments, cutting up statemtents to place them in different orders. You can talk about the difference between spoken arguments and written too. It wouldn't hurt to add a few pictures for interest or to help present the argument or table, graphs, etc. and talk about how they contribute.

After a debate you can write on one side of the room, the strongest statement from one side and on the other side of the room, the strongest statement from the opposing side. Then ask the students to line up according to their real feelings on the topic. They can explain their choices - maybe they are in the middle, etc. Or you can then put the two people from opposite ends together and so on down the line to talk more about the topic.

At any time in discussing the topic you can write down some of the words they are using on the board and talk about others they could have used to make their debate more powerful.

readme123456 · Post by **readme123456** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 2:38 pm

Last class there were no debates, no meetings. I was going to bring a movie about China in English, as my students suggested, but couldn't find the one I wanted to (The Year Of The Yao). I downloaded short videos from different movies and brought a laptop. First, I showed several videos without sound and everyone tried to guess what were dialoges about. Then they made their own dialogs. There was also one movie where I turned off video and this time they guessed it listening to audio track.
We also played a little game, asking questions and answering without using the words 'yes/no'.
Following will be the lat 2 classes with these students.
For the last one I plan to bring print-outs of all words learned with me and go over example sentences.
Should anything special be done next time?

Thanks

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 3:50 pm

How about a party? You can review the vocabulary in some sort of party game - a version of Twister with words instead of colours - nouns, verbs, articles and adjectives instead of red, blue, yellow and green. Or some sort of Pictionary. Lots of food - potlucks are fun with all students bringing their favourites. Some sort of way to continue to the learning with an exchange of emails or once a month meetings in the local establishment to speak English? Be sure to review what you have done and show them some way that they have progressed. You can even give out diplomas for funny accomplishments or real. The last class is kind of rite of passage and I believe should be acknowledged somehow.

readme123456 · Post by **readme123456** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:57 pm

For today's lesson I decided to use 'job interview' as the topic. We sketched a list of an ideal employees qualities, and then I wrote down 2 similar lists that I found on internet. We compared them and extracted qualities that are present in at least 2 lists, thus creating an even more comprehensive one.

Later each student had a chance to interview everyone else and choose one person to take over his current job. Students made notes on each candidates' responses and later explained their choice.

At the end of the class, I asked to name the best games and activities we ever tried in this course. Today's activity was among them.

Sally: party is an idea, I will buy some drinks to go with the list of words learned; but I feel that I lack some interesting and suitable content for the last lesson. I still have to come up with something good.
Maybe you have additional thoughts.

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 3:38 pm

You could take a class picture. Have you taken pictures along the way? You could make a slide show for them to remind them what they did. Most students will say that they enjoyed the last thing you did because they don't remember all the things you actually did do and they often don't know why.

You could make a print out of this thread and show the students your thinking for planning the course.

You could ask for suggestions for the next course.

You could even teach lesson number 1 of the next course to encourage them to come back.

You could make posters of all the activities you have done because they probably won't remember them with "rules" or suggestions of how to do each one and the why. Add a few others to show what is coming up in the next course.

I will send you our course outline for Commerce 299 and you could hand that out to see if they would like to follow that - modified of course to your schedule.

I can send you the outline for the career preparation part of the course.

But I think I would include some time of evaluation - positive, of course - to prove to them that they have improved. When you go over the posters of activities you can ask them to do it again briefly and they will see how much they could do now as opposed to their first try.

readme123456 · Post by **readme123456** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 2:16 pm

Ok, today we had the last class. I brought a list of words learned with example sentences for every student and we went through it. Then I showed the lesson plans I made when preparing lessons.
I brought some drinks for everyone; at the end everyone read out some Chinese sentences from my Chinese textbook while others translated it into English, which demonstrated how really good they all are when given a chance to talk.

Overall I'm satisfied, some things I haven't done, but a lot of things I tried in this course, so I know how it would work in other class now.

Thank you for your help, I'm looking forward to opening another thread when I have a class.

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Teaching adult ESL for the first time

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