TPRS

Well had an interesting time yesterday.  I was asked to do another seminar.. so I grabbed on to the suggestions Trude had... Good thing she's not here to use them.. Or if she were, I wouldn't be burdened with doing them all.  :)
Anyway, Trude and I have been looking at the TPRS method.  Total Physical Response through story telling. A few days before the seminar, my boss Helena asked me to do something on slang phrases... I said " No! I'm doing story telling". Then I felt bad, and decided to incorporate both together.  There were two classes of students.. about 30 and at least 3 teachers.  So I did some fruit and the phrases that go with them.. like it's a lemon, or he's the apple of her eye, or she doesn't know beans about anything.  After we covered these phrases, then I explained how the story system works. Then I did the story.  It was real interesting the response i had.  Students were giving me answers, and even teachers.  They were quite relaxed about it.  There was a photographer there taking pictures the whole time.  After the seminar, a number of the students said they really enjoyed the seminar, and one teacher said to me she enjoyed it ,and that her students asked her if she would teach using stories with them.  After the seminar I had an interview with the newspaper.  They keep insisting I work for Ryan Research International University!!!  I can't seem to get them to understand it isn't a university.. so just let them think what they want... as long as I get my visas and registrations!!! ha! 
Here's a sample of the story I did...

 

I tried to match the phrases to the pictures... life is a bowl of cherries, she's the apple of his eye, cool as a cucumber, in a pickle.  We all had a good time.  I was pleased that Helena was pleased with it all too.  Ok... that's the scoop on the last seminar.  I'm in the news but I don't know how it is really.  I've never seen the paper there.  Have a good one. 

Verb seminar

Whew!! Glad that's over.  It actually went ok.  There were mostly students there maybe about 40, and about 5 teachers.  When I realized it was a lot more students than teachers I decided to turn it more into a lesson rather than a lecture.  There was hardly any response from them, but answers I did get just reinforced that they have major problems with the verbs.  Although they have good comprehension.   I told them about you Fred, and Ryan Research, and then about my research and told them my methods were telling stories and playing with blocks.  :)  Don't know how impressed they were.  One student asked me questions afterwards.  She is doing a thesis on different teaching methods.  So she is taking special ideas from each different method.  I told her she was more than welcome to sit in on my classes any time she wishes.  The other students who stayed behind just asked questions about if I liked Ukraine, and how I felt here with the language.  I was so nervous but I am glad it all went well.  Here's the PPP about it.  I was hoping they would say "wow" when they saw the charts, but they weren't impressed.   verb seminar

Looking for a job

Did two classes yesterday on job descriptions and looking for a job.  Then did a TPRS on finding a job.  The students were excellent.  They were third year students.  The first time I've had them, and they were very responsive.  Totally enjoyed the story part.  They did a good job using the business vocabulary we were covering too.  When I asked them to write their stories, they had very interesting stories, but they made a lot of errors with their verbs.  So I am thinking I am going to have to work specifically on verbs too.  Here are the pictures of the story.  It really is an excellent way to get students to talk.  The name of the story is Bill is looking for a job.  The students often gave him a different name in their stories.. one was James Bond, another was Chuck Norris.  They have fun.  I just hope they are learning something.  :)

Headhunters

All the pieces

Ok.  So I'm supposed to be teaching Business English. So I have a class where a few students walk out on me... so now I want to take vengeance!!!  I'm gonna teach them 'headhunters'.  Actually my idea for our next class is CVs.  I know these students already know how to do a CV.  So we'll cover what goes into a CV with some practice worksheets, and we'll do and exercise where they have to construct a cv from clues given,  then we'll play head hunters.  It's a board game fashioned after clue.  So we have on the board 8 different universities, there are cards for each university, there are transfers to different universities if they wish to transfer, there are 6 applicants for a job, each card showing the applicant and something about them, and there are 6 jobs. A tally sheet too, to tick off clues to identify who is or isn't in the envelope.( That's the paper in the background with the nice orange envelope... which, by the way, Trude says she made better than I did!! HA!)   One card each... university, applicant, and job is put into an envelope and they must make guesses while moving around the board who is in the card, which university they attended and what job they were successful in getting.

The board game with all the universities

 Here's a picture of the game.  Trude and I spent a lot of time this week working on it.  It can be modified to stress articles or prepositions too, or simply modified to "stress".. whatever your condition and desire is at present!! :)   If anyone is interested in the game I can put it into dropbox.  :)








 

The universities attended

game pieces

The applicants

  

The famous sought after  jobs.

Here's our new Halloween lesson for tomorrow:

First we'll brainstorm to find out how much they know about it, and to refresh their memory. Then we'll watch this video, which introduces some idioms about FEAR.
Next we'll play the board game that reinforces these and other idioms and vocabulary items re death, devils, etc.

There are "DEATH" cards and "DEVIL" cards, each of which contains an idiom or proverb using the words dead (or a derivative thereof) or devil. A question is asked re its meaning, and the answer is included in the multiple choice. This task is necessary if the player has landed on a ghost or grave (DEATH), or on a vampire or witch (DEVIL).
If they land on a jack o' lantern.they must create sentences using certain words from a vocabulary list.
After the winner has been declared and the game is over, we go on to conversation cards. Each student takes a card and has a few minutes to think of a story to tell (real or imagined) regarding fears, vampires, witches, etc.

The Black Cat

For a Halloween lesson, I'll try this for storytelling...

The story by Edgar Allen Poe can be found here
This video might be easier to work with in class:


Questions for storytelling are here .
Teaching Definite Associations, and an exercise.

I'd like to use this too sometime from BBC.
These questions are also useful.

Fake Pilot

This story about Andrea Sirlo was kind of a hit today.
I told it by showing the pictures and asking the following questions:

Slide 1:

1. Where are we?
2. What country is Turin in?
3. Have you been to Turin?
4. Where in Turin are we now?
5. Have you been to Turin?
6. Why did you go to Turin?
7. How did you get to Turin?
8. Are we at the Turin airport?
9. Who works at airports?

Have you been to an airport?

Slide 2:

1. Where do we want to go?
2. How should we travel to x?
3. Have you ever x'ed before?
4. Shall we fly to Turin?
5. Who flies planes?
6. Do you want to fly a plane?
7. How do you like to travel?
8. Is it better to drive or fly to Munich?
9. Is it safe to fly?

Slide 3:

1. What is this card?
2. When do you need an ID card?
3. Who is this person?
4. Do you trust him?
5. What does he want to do?
6. Do you have an ID card?
7. Why do you need an ID card?

Slide 4:

1. What is this?
2. Where is the airplane?
3. Who is in the airplane?
4. Have you been in an airplane?
5. Where is this plane going?
6. Who is the pilot?
7. Do you want to fly a plane?

Slide 5:

1. What is this a picture of?
2. Where are the windows?
3. Is it a car?
4. ...a truck?
5. ...a plane?
6. Do you want to fly a plane?
7. Who is in the circle?

Slide 6:

I didn't finish writing these up...

You might ask, "what was the learning goal of this lesson...well, I want my students to have a chance to talk, also I want them to use the article correctly, so this is the way we practice.