Friday, August 20, 2010

Lesson 1: Introductory class

This is the all important first lesson between you and your student. It's an opportune moment for you to get to know your student, for them to get to know you, and for you to find out what they need as far as English goes so that you can gear your future sessions together towards their needs. Obviously this is totally dependent on their level. It goes without saying that Beginners will need everything! But the more advanced your student (S), the more they will have specific ideas about what they want to learn. Or not, as is often the case. That's your job as a teacher, to find out. You can do this in a number of ways. Speaking activites help you see how fluent they are, but standard 'interview' type questions can get a little tiresome. So here's a few ideas to give your first class some flare!

For young learners (8-12 years) a nice activity is the 'Passport Control game'. Take your passport or ID card to the class. Show it to the S. Ask them to tell you what your name, age, nationality, place of birth is. Elicit the questions needed to find out these facts i.e. Where are you from? Next ask your S to make their own ID card or Passport, complete with beautiful self-portrait. Add fantasy categories to the passport like 'Favourite flavour ice cream' etc. When they are done, elicit the questions needed to find out these facts. Drill the questions a few times. Now send your S out of the room with their Passport and close the door. Put your chair infront of the door. Open the door and say 'Welcome to...(insert fantasy place)' to create a Passport control context. Ask 'Can I see your Passport please?' and say there's a problem. Really create a scene. Then say you need to ask some questions. Holding the passport info page away from the S, ask them the questions your drilled. If they answer any questions incorrectly, say 'Sorry but you can't come in' and send them out again for ten seconds. Repeat the situation until they answer all questions correctly. When they've done that, they become the Passport control officer, so now they ask all the questions and can send you out of the room.

You could also play the sleepover classic Truth or Dare. You might need to demonstrate what 'Dare' means, and prepare some appropriate dares (if you have time put them on little pieces of paper and drop them in a bag). Ask your S 'Truth or Dare', if they look at you strangely just encourage them to answer one or the other. Through playing the game your S will understand what to do. Remember, keep the questions and the dares appropriate to level and age.

A good speaking game for teens and adults that keeps the conversation focused, is language specific to Wh questions, and can be easily adapted to the level of your student is the 'Cloud Game'. Start by writing any brief, interesting facts about yourself on a piece of paper and draw a cloud around them, thinking about what the question would be to find out this information, like that gameshow in the US, Jeopardy. i.e. You write 'Tony', the question would be 'What is your name?' Hardly rocket science. To demonstrate that this is what you want the student (S) to do, draw horizontal lines equal to the number of words (or letters for lower levels) in the question you want them to ask, like Hangman, but with a whole question. Ask your S what the question is. Work through it with them. Once they have filled in the spaces and arrived at the question, they will know what you want them to do. Now write about six to eight facts about yourself in clouds and elicit the questions from your S. If they struggle you can tell them how many words etc. If they find even 'What's your name?' impossible, then you better make the next lesson about simple question formation in English. You're done. Now it's their turn to draw clouds. Repeat the same thing. After 40 minutes hopefully you've both learnt a lot about each other.

If you have a more advanced teen or adult S, say pre-intermediate or above, you can play the Tell the Truth game. Dictate three sentences to your S about yourself. They must all be quite strange facts. One of them must be a lie. The idea is the S will act as investigator and try to find out which is the false fact. You must be able to back up all three facts, even the false one, so a little pre-thought is required. Your S needs to try and catch you out by asking your multiple questions about each fact, attempting to trip you up in the process. When you're done change roles, so that you are asking the questions.

As far as correction goes during these activites, you need to decide what's appropriate, however nobody likes being interrupted mid sentence, so if your S is making all kinds of mistakes just write down the most common/frequent ones and go over them at the end of the class.

For homework on the first day, set your teen or adult S a writing task. A good one is 'Write your Autobiography' or if they snarl and hiss at this suggeston write a short story that starts and ends with the same sentence/word or if that fails give them the first and last sentence of a story and tell them to fill in the middle part. For young learners, homework should be colouring in and labelling of some sort.

Have fun!

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