Conversation cards (Present Simple)

One activity I like to do with beginner and intermediate classes to really focus on conversation is to give them "conversation cards".  When we have finished a lesson (for example: present simple) and before we have a test or quiz, we spend maybe 30 minutes on the conversation cards.

There are two ways I like to use these cards.  Either the students have permanent partners or groups and simply swap cards when they are finished with another group, or they rotate their partners as well.  To rotate partners, I like to have the student who just answered a question take that card and now ask it to a new partner.  That way, they are familiar with the vocabulary and context of the question and can explain it to the new partner.

The questions are intended to have grammar the students should be familiar with, and generally vocabulary they have seen before, but it keeps them excited to throw in a few strange questions (ex: "Do you like to look at the moon at night?") and new vocabulary (ex: "Do you like to ride a roller coaster?"). 

They are intended to be a challenge, but a controlled challenge, and generally the students finish the activity feeling more confident about being able to respond to a variety of topics.

Here is the two page present simple conversation cards. 

Here is a blank template of the cards so you can write in your own questions.

Teaching Adverbs of Frequency

One of the lessons I had a lot of opportunities to teach starting out at my school was the adverbs of frequency.  I got the beginner lessons pretty frequently, and it was beginning to feel like I would forever be talking about what someone always or never did.

The charts below are a cleaned up version of the worksheet I often used with beginner students.  The first worksheet uses "Do you play...." (Yes/No) questions.  The second worksheet uses "How often..." questions.

After we had done an intro lesson to the construction of sentences with adverbs of frequency (always, usually, often, sometime, rarely, never) this worksheet was a good conversation activity and final practice.  Students were encouraged to interact with the entire class, not only their neighbors.  It usually involves walking around, so it is also useful for breaking up a long lesson.  It took about 20 minutes to actually do the activity, not counting time explaining.

To play: One student asks a question (ex: Do you play soccer on the weekend?) and another student responds with their answer (ex: Yes, I always play soccer on the weekend).  The student who asks the question then makes a check or an ex or some kind of mark on the "Always" box under "play___ ?".

I initially intended this activity to be a type of Bingo, where students had to complete an entire row to "win", but most students were simply happy to engage in the conversations and have all the information in front of them to work from.

It works well for a mix of speaking ability, since the lower level students can simply write a phrase into the chart headings (ex: play tennis ?) and repeat the question to all their classmates, while more advanced students were able to construct more and more complicated questions as time went on.

This worksheet directs the questions at "you" but of course, it can be adapted for other subjects. (ex: "Does your sister play volleyball?" / "Yes, she sometimes does." )

Download the first worksheet here.   Download the second worksheet here.

StoryCorp worksheet about Ronald McNair

Here's one more resource for tonight:

NPR (National Public Radio) is a treasure trove of ESL teaching tools for the upper levels with the extensive free audio/visual materials they host on their site.  They have news articles ranging from serious political topics for the argumentative students, to business news for the money-minded, to culture pieces that everyone can learn from.

I particularly enjoy using their StoryCorp audio clips, since they are authentic American stories that are usually short (about 3 or 4 minutes) and all come with transcripts (if you look closely at the website).  The people being interviewed use extremely authentic language, and it's a great tool for breaking down real American English.

They usually have a...sad...focus to them however, as a drawback.  I certainly had to veto quite a few I was listening to since they were making me tear up.

Only this past year did I discover Animated StoryCorp which has very useful videos accompanying some of the stories.

I watched the animated story about Ronald McNair, an African American astronaut who was on the Challenger Shuttle, with a private student recently and we both found it to be a GREAT discussion piece.  I recommend watching it with higher-level students if you are discussing racism or race relations, plans for future occupations, or space travel, as it has elements of all three.

I prepared a list of useful vocabulary, content questions and discussion questions as well, if they are beneficial to anyone.

Here is the pdf download link.

Hopefully a start of some useful teaching resources

As I've gotten more involved in teaching ESL to adults, I've created a boxful of games, worksheets, and assorted pictures and papers that others might find helpful for either using directly in class or getting some good ideas for more personalized ideas.  Since I have benefited greatly from the generosity of other teachers posting their materials, I'm offering these resources for anyone to use in the classroom, and to adapt as they would like.  If you have any questions about using them, or suggestions for how to make them better, feel free to post a comment.

I'm in between jobs at the moment due to moving to Canada from Chicago, so hopefully the next month will see a lot of these resources getting on the internet, but we'll see how I do.

The first one is a simple board game template to practice "be going to" and time expressions for the future such as "tomorrow", "next week", "in two days".

The students work in small groups, ideally no more than four as the pace starts to slow down the more students you add to a group.  This game works particularly well at getting all levels involved as it encourages the higher level students to help out weaker students, and there is a lot of repetition for the weaker students to pick up on example answers.  The more advanced students will take the game as an opportunity to have a conversation as well, especially with some helpful encouragement.

In the past I have used coins as the "dice", moving two spaces for head and three spaces for tails, since I didn't have access to dice.  However, using coins in this way definitely makes for A LOT of repetition, be that good or bad.

There is also the problem that different groups of students will finish at different times, but they are generally happy to play more than once.

Download the pdf of the board game

Especially since this is the first resource I am sharing, please report any issues your are having with the download process or errors I might have made in creating the game.

Thanks!

Slowly Refining My Teaching

So I'm in the third week of my regular morning class, and it has been an enlightening experience.  It is so different to be the main person in charge of planning overarching lesson goals, and picking what kind of lesson we will be having what day.  If a lesson flows smoothly I get to take the credit, but conversely if things just don't work I have no one to blame but myself.

One of the main challenges I have been facing is how to review past grammar concepts or vocabulary, particularly since I was given a class that was three units behind in the textbook.  Add on to that the fact that out of approximately 25 students, only two have been there for the entire session so far.  Most days I have at least five absences, and it's rarely the same people over and over again.  This combines to a difficult situation for reviewing.  No time, and I can't count on the fact that all the students present have even learned this.  But, my attempted solution for the moment is to do the review in the beginning of class when the students are still filtering in (apparently 8 a.m. class is still impossible to get to on time, even when you leave college).  The majority of the students who arrive on time are the same ones who are pretty regular, or at least are more motivated.  And with only ten or so students there in the first half an hour - compared with about twenty in a cramped classroom - I can give them all the personal attention that they may need, even if they were absent the first time I taught a given grammar point or whatever.

So we'll see how that goes.  As I said, it's a whole new world for me, since my position with the Masuda BOE did not involve any curriculum planning, and - as I've mentioned - English in grade school is less about actual knowledge and more about being in school.  Review was unnecessary.  Language retention was pretty much unheard of.

Since I have become a teacher and moved myself to the other side of the learning process, I have found that I am slightly forgetting what it is like to be a student.  This became most apparent this summer when I was working with teenagers and I found myself getting frustrated with their behavior.  But honestly, what did I expect?  I was there myself.  Class was time to space out and occasionally pay attention if I felt the urge strike me.  Teachers can be nice, but they are the "other" and you are going to associate yourself with the other students before you get on the side of any teacher.  This at least is what I remember of being in class in high school.  I think about this often too with my study abroad experience, which is similar to some of the students at the school I work at now.  Yes, I signed up for the class, and yes, I wanted to learn Japanese.  But three hours a day was killer.  And immersion studying was bewildering.  Occasionally speaking English to the other students was a lifeline.  I am often amazed by how much these students are devoted to speaking English in class, since I know I wasn't that good about it, and dropped the Japanese speaking when I could get away with it.  Perhaps a personal flaw; can't say.

But recently the Japan-lust has been creeping back up on me, extremely intensely, and I find myself lingering sadly near Japanese grocery stores and book stores.  I dug out my old JET textbooks that I didn't have the will to study in Masuda, and I have been voraciously consuming them.  I have been happily creeping people out on the subway my muttering in Japanese to myself while I study.

Aside from just being good for my Japanese skills, I do believe that it will help me in teaching.  I have forgotten how long it takes to read a language I don't know, and I have forgotten the personal process of breaking down a long text into something manageable.  I have forgotten what kind of activities help me, at least, acquire a new word or a new grammar point.

Through karate, I've always known that when you are a teacher, you are also learning: you review the knowledge and you must feel comfortable in it in order to share it with someone else.  But I had never thought about the necessity of being a teacher and a student at the same time.  It is something I am exploring for the time being.

Anyway that's all for now.  :)

Teacher-Lady says "Good Morning, Class"

Another eternity without updating, but I have been rather busy. I think I can keep things more up to date if I don't aim for a long meaningful post, so perhaps there will be short missives from the ESL front.

Update #1: I got my CELTA! I am now certified to teach English as a Second Language. CELTA was good, I learned a lot about the structure of a good lesson, methodology that is/isn't effective, and good tricks for the classroom. I can't say I learned much about English itself, which is perhaps one failing of the course as there are many times as a native speaker I have no idea why English works the way it does, but it is an area that I can and will work on. It is frustrating for students when they expect there is a logical answer for why English behaves a given way, and all you can say is, "it...just...does?"

Update #2: I live in Manhattan! It has been two years of wildly drastic living area changes, from Masuda to Hamilton to NYC, and I barely feel like I belong here, but I am certain in time I will get used to it. Four of us are sharing an apartment, keeping the rent manageable, but the location certainly helps. Washington Heights is certainly not Downtown, but it has its personality. I am going to learn Spanish and work my way into the community, if for no other reason than I miss throwing myself upon the hospitality of foreign individuals. Cultures: there are many that are different from mine. But how do I know for sure if I don't try them out? Also, I can only speak for certain points of view from some Mexican, Ecuadorian, and Dominican individuals I have met, but they might be more pushy about getting married and having cute babies than my Japanese students were, and I found the Japanese students to be rather obsessed. I have not told most of my current students my age, but they are all convinced it's high time to have at least one child - but two would be better. And of course, this comes from their own experiences as most of the young women I have talked to from these countries have a child or two, married or not.

The saddest part for me though is when they talk about having left their "babies" in their native country and how they haven't seen them in a while. I can't imagine what that decision must be like, but I have a few questions I would love to ask. Are they having these children because they want to, or do they lack the information and resources to make their own reproductive decisions? I can see how a child you did not plan for could be perceived as a burden to leave behind in search of better opportunities. But that's not the feeling I get from them since they tell me so proudly about their kids, so perhaps it is something else. Are opportunities that limited in their own country that leaving their child behind with family for years can feel like a good decision? One woman hasn't seen her child in five years. She will be six or seven when she sees her mom again. But then again, we tend to view family in the more nuclear sense here, and perhaps we over-emphasize the relationship between parents and children. Maybe the mother-child bond is weak, but the kid has a great relationship with the grandparents or aunts and uncles. Maybe it doesn't really matter who is taking care of the kid as long as someone is. But it is a new idea for me, and I would love to know more someday.

Update #3: I am an English teacher (duh?). I am officially hired at a school and I have real, regular students, and a real, regular schedule. I memorize names, and try to have a structure to my classes, and generally give everyone their money's worth. I'm looking to branch out into private lessons, but I still feel a little unsteady in some areas, such as TOEFL prep and really advanced students. The super advanced students are the one who know more English than I do, I think, and can throw around crazy grammar terms like nobody's business. They scare me still. So I'm reading a grammar reference book to prepare my grammar arsenal, and in the meantime I am making up flyers that I will some day print and distribute. Know anyone who needs to learn some English...?

That's all I got now, stay tuned for more ESL missives? Just don't ask me where godzilla and the tea went....

A quick note!

I'm in orientation in Matsue today, and got a chance to post some pictures on Facebook of what I've been seeing! Take a look, and there will be more news to come soon hopefully!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2057345&id=8703770&l=19c3393a65