A friend who sometimes comments here at ESL-blog gave me an idea a few years back: cut out a bunch of faces from magazines and use them in class. Students are divided into teams. I always use two teams, but there could be more. Each team gets one face and writes a description of it. Then all the faces go in one pile (I have about 15 white men that I use), the team reads its description; the other decides which face is being described.
I've done it a bunch of times; it always works well. I've done it with high beginners, intermediate students, upper intermediate students. It seems like there's always more "face vocabulary" to learn, no matter what level students are. And students are just about always successful determining which face is being described. Maybe it takes them two guesses, but no one goes home discouraged. With an advanced class I followed with the same activity using apples instead of faces. Students thought it would be too hard but they got it (there were 5 apples I think).
I recently found two listening activities that work well with it. They can be used as a warmer for the activitiy, or the activitty could be a warmer for the two listenings. I tried it both ways and they both worked. The one thing I didn't try was one listening before and one after. Next time. Anyway, the listenings are 49-50 (photocopy the faces on 50) and 55 (photocopy the faces) of Teaching Listening Comprehension by Penny Ur.
Here's a web site about someone complaining about how he was fired in China. He seems to blame the school and students for everything (though admittedly I have not read all 93 chapters). However, it seems to me that he himself made several mistakes and that the blame is partly his. Remember that this is an American man teaching Chinese college students.
For example he called his female students in their dorms after 10:00 PM. I don't think calling students at home is all that common. He had dinner with one of his students several times. I can see going out with an entire class, but going out with one student is asking for trouble. When students complained about his teaching, he seemed to become rather hostile, first assuming it had something to do with the school using poor evaluations as an excuse to pay him less money, and then demanding to know how he could improve. I would say his job is to improve but his students job is not to show him how to teach.
It also seems that he spent far more time with his female students than with his male students, taking them to dinner (where they -not him- started talking about inappropriate subjects), asking them to take him to the hospital where they saw his chest (he had a chest rash), etc. If I were the boss, I would've confronted him too.
In response, he seemed to deny everything. When told that students were complaining, he said he didn't believe it. When asked why he only invited girls out, he answered that this was untrue (though he now admits that he invited boys only rarely). When students suggested they needed more background knowledge to understand the readings (many about American culture), he said they were wrong.
I'm not saying that his university handled this well, but I would have fired him too. Look at the respect he had for his students:
The mantra was being intoned again: why why why, a girl wanted to know, did I invite girls and not boys?What gave a silly young girl like her the right to question me about my personal choices? I asked her. "You're forgetting the respect due your teachers."
Posted by James Trotta at 6:23 AM | Comments (1)
An interesting study that you can be a part of. About keeping vocabulary notebooks and "wordsurfing".
Martin Bygate has shown that task repetition facilitates more accurate and complex output. My research question is:
Does using message boards prior to a class discussion increase the accuracy and complexity of classroom interaction?
hypothesis: students who have written about a topic previously will produce more accurate and complex language during class discussions.
To find out: We'll have to look at language produced in class.
Take a few discussion classes that are close in level and are doing the same topics. Let's say we use 4. classes 1 + 3: discusses 1 topic normally and then discusses the next topic after writing about it on message boards. classes 2 + 4: discusses 1 topic after writing about it on message boards and then discusses one topic normally.
Example: The 1st topic is "staying helathy". 2 + 4 classes have written about it previously and 1 + 3 haven't. The langauge each class produces can be compared. 2 + 4 would be expected to produce more complex language. The 2nd topic is "keeping pets". This time 1+3 have written about it and would be expected to produce more complex language during the class discussion.
If a particular class always performed better, than the difference wouldn't be attributed to using message boards.
We could also look at one class over time: Do learners in a class generally produce produce more accurate/complex language in discussions after participating in message boards?
I've recently used chapters from two books to get my EAP students (I'm teaching content-based EAP classes: American History and Sociocultural traditions; Sociology of American Cities) talking about differences between academics in Korea and America. America because my university sends exchange students to America, but not other English speaking countries. And because I'm American and know about academics in America.
I use is "Conversational Ball Games" from Lee and Gunderson (2001). This article talks about the author's experience with Japanese conversational styles and how they differ drastically from Western styles.
I always ask the question about Korean conversational styles, and I always get different answers. It seems that younger students use Western styles more while older students come closer to Japanese style conversations.
At least, that's what they say. Before doing this article, I notice that students are very conscious of whose turn it is to speak, and that they take pretty long turns. We talk about how turns in English are usually quite short and that anyone can take a turn at any time (as long as they have something to say).
Another one of the things I'm focusing on is the ability to listen to lectures and take effective notes. To get students thinking about lectures in American colleges and how they differ from lectures in Korea, I put together a handout based on chapter 4 of Lewis and Reinders (2003).
It talks about what professors think the point of giving lecture is. We discuss in class differences and similarities in lecturing styles and aims. There's also practical advice about how lectures are organized and that sort of thing.
Both of these chapters are ways to broach cultural differences and how they affect language use. I've been reading a ton of stuff about sociolinguistics for my masters, and they say how cultural differences are so important. What I haven't found much of is practical advice for teachers to introduce students to cultural differences that affect language use.
Certainly this would be easier with homogenous class with a teacher who knows the students' culture pretty well, but instead of talking so much about the importance of socilinguistic competence, why don't sociolinguists spend more time researching how to develop this competence?
Lee, L. & Gundersen, E. (2001) Select Readings: Intermediate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, M. & Reinders, H. (2003). Study Skills for Speakers of English as a Second Language. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Remember that class that said everything was too hard? Well I was right, they liked the grammar cloze. I took this section of a speech by Bill Clinton:
I have traveled all over the world. I have met with the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. I have been in the most successful communities in the world. I have also been in the poorest villages of Africa, of Asia, of Latin America. And I believe, more strongly today than ever, that intelligence and ability and a human spirit are evenly distributed across the rich and the poor, in every continent on Earth.