For Nela

One of my students has been to Cambridge recently. I had recommended him to go there since he wanted to study English abroad and my experience in that town was great. This is the postcard I got on Monday...

My blog's raison d'être

Hi! I'm back again - actually, looking forward to Xmas holidays :) I must confess I don't feel like going through every little detail of my last lessons. That's not this blog's raison d'être.

With this blog I just want to capture meaningful experiences that help me - or some other teachers - become a better teacher by learning, or even by unlearning. Yeah, why not? Learning because I'm an eternal learner as a teacher, but unlearning as well because of the erroneus preconceived ideas and expectactions I used to have, and I don't have anymore or at least I try not to have. Does it make any sense? For me it does.

Moral? I teach, ergo I (un)learn.

TGIF song

 The Cure - Friday I'm in Love

-Fill in the gaps with the days of the week.

-How does he feel every day? And you?
On Monday he _____. I _____.

 

The black sheep or the third person singular

This is the way I teach the Present Simple - or at least I try - to my fresh(wo)men.  'The Black Sheep' is a mnemonic device. This is a digital board screenshot.

November 25: International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

Level: B1?

http://www.eslholidaylessons.com/11/day_for_the_elimination_of_violence_against_women.html

Will I?

Last Wednesday they started learning how to use 'can' correctly. Even on Friday they saw 'could' in a conversation, 'Ordering Coffee', and it turned out they used it quite well too. 

The thing is that next Wednesday's topic is Present Simple, and I can foresee that once we see it they will produce sentences such as 'He can sings'. It is always the same. I know that giving them lots of controlled practice of the new grammar point will help, but I will not be able to avoid their confusion or... will I?! (with flat o falling intonation)

Possible misunderstandings

Consciously or subconsciously we, teachers, tend to play down the importance of making mistakes that do not convey a lot of information, that is, our students can make that mistake and still be understood, still communicate. Thus we move on from the Present Simple to giving them the vocabulary they will need to reach the unit's goals and so on.

When doing this, though, we are missing one thing which could be important in error correction: possible misunderstandings. For instance, "what do you do?" vs. "what are you doing?" or "sheet" vs. "shit", etc.

Last two weeks

Let's have a look at the last two weeks...

We've seen the following contents: 

- revision of unit 1: classroom language, greetings, the alphabet, and cardinal numbers; 

- verb 'to be': present simple;

- nationalities and countries;

- telling the time;

- main difference between 'excuse me' and 'sorry';

- getting to know the world: checking in and shops conversations;
- culture: Halloween.

• One of the most complicated contents to assimilate for some of them has been the difference between the subject pronoun 'you' and the possessive adjective 'your'. Even they mispronounce them.

• Last week they first saw 'excuse me' and 'sorry' in unit 2. Seemingly they understood their uses, but when carrying out a cloze exercise, they didn't get it right. Therefore I drew two stick figures on the board, Peter and Molly, and mimicking at the same time I told them as follows: "These are Peter and Molly. Let's pretend Peter wants to get past. He would say "excuse me, can I get past?", so we use 'excuse me' BEFORE asking for permission. Then, suddenly, Peter treads on Molly's foot... what would he say?! (Students said 'sorry'). "Sorry!", so we use 'sorry' AFTER the action we want to apologise for." I think they got it.

• Last day they had a test about shops vocabulary. It was not a disaster, but for some of them the failure reason was bad memory and lack of concentration. Maybe it was their first test ever! I should teach them some memo strategies...

Moral?

Breaking news

One of my students call me 'Bones'... No comment, no moral. I am puzzled. I really am.

Catering for diversity I

Adapting to large and diverse groups of students is proving to be really really complicated. Apart from the usual diversity that I cater for, such as students who need extension or revision activities, in my EFL class there are some students who have some special needs.

Student X:  S/he cannot see very well, so I resize all the photocopies to make them bigger. No problem then.

Student Y: S/he has a hearing disability, so I vocalize and try and speak in front of her. I do sometimes forget, though, and turn my back or start walking miles... oh gosh! I feel so bad!

Student Z: With Asperger syndrome, the only thing I know so far is that s/he misunderstands irony and s/he is a little bit 'obsessed' with the textbook syllabus order. I have to do some research into it.

Moral?  "If everyone played lead guitar you wouldn't have a band - just a very annoying situation, and no music"

Getting to know the world

Kids need to talk about kid things; teenagers need to talk about teenager things; adults need to talk about adult things. To build their interest in the lesson teachers sometimes have to step away from the coursebook to make this work. That's why on the second day of school I decided to ask my students why they were studying English, and I found out that one of their strongest motivations is to speak English when travelling abroad. 

As a result, in order to keep up their passion for learning English I have incorporated in the syllabus design some changes and we dedicate every Friday to learn some travel language basics. For instance, last Friday they learnt -or at least I hope so- how to go to a hotel and check in by means of role-playing in pairs. The most difficult thing was to make sure that students were using the target language during the 'production' component of the lesson since they are 32 fresh(wo)men, and obviously high number of students and low level of English are two factors that do not help.

Next day they have to role-play their dialogues in front of their classmates. Let's see how it goes. I think I am going to rename Friday's lesson to "Getting to know the world" - or maybe not, dunno yet :S

Moral? The more I teach, the more I want to learn. And the more I learn, the more I want to teach. Does it make sense?

Surviving my first EFL lesson with fresh(wo)men

This year I'm teaching EFL to adults who are fresh(wo)men. I didn't know what to expect because most of them haven't attended any school for decades, so I was quite nervous and lost on the first day. 

The only thing that was clear to me was that it had to be one hundred percent English in a friendly and safe atmosphere. Although they looked quite scared, I could teach without using any Spanish or Catalan. 

It should be noted that after mimicking and smiling and drawing on the board for two hours, my energy was completely out. However, it was worth it because... do you know what? One of my students, my eighty-seven-year-old student, told me in the end: "For me this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn English and I'm glad to be your pupil."

Moral? 'Living' rather than 'surviving' I should have said.