Tips On High Conversation Classes!
Hi!
i´m an english teacher from brazil, i´ve been teaching for 5 years, and for me conversation classes during a long time are always a challenge.
because i don´t know if you feel the same, but sometimes i get bored with my own classes. i already used movies, citycoms, text, music.
but i think i should learn other ways to use the same stuff.
any of you feel the same!?!?
what do you usually do in this kind of classes?!?!
i mean to keep the students awake and interacting and on the same way learn more and get more vocabulary!
i would apreciate any help!!
thanx!!
Messiah
Re: Tips On High Conversation Classes!
I do not know what kind students you are teaching. I am a Chinese who is learning English, I would like to share my experiences of learning English, particularly spoken English.
When I came to the UK several years ago, spoken English and listening comprehension were the major challenges for me (even now), as normally most Chinese students have been trained a lot in grammars and remembering vocabularies. When I was speaking in English, I tended to think about the grammar and vocabulary first, namely the structure, tense, and words. I tended to organize them in my mind first, and then I spoke them out. Somebody said that practice makes perfect. It is true, but how? Based on my experiences, two methods helped me a lot.
The first one is watching TV with English subtitles on. I bought many DVDs of the famous drama, ‘Friends’, and watched them with subtitles on. I found it worked. After I finished watching the whole series, I felt like being soaked in English. Both my speaking and listening is improved quite a lot. Actually, I am still watching it over and over. I tried to watch BBC news with subtitles on, but not that good, as the subtitles are displayed a little bit later to the voices (any idea to solve this problem?).
Another effective method to improve my speaking and listening is getting familiar with English in different occasions, such as in kitchen, hotel, shopping, religions, politics, wedding, football, culture, whatever topics you are interested in. In this way, I am getting familiar with more vocabularies and expressions. You will know how English express themselves and what vocabulary they tend to use in a certain occasion, in another word, know the real and living English rather than English from books. This is very important, as I found the English I learnt from my real life is different from what I learnt from books before.
This is my experiences of learning English. From a student’s perspective, I would like my English teacher to help me in these two ways. Hope it helps
Re: Tips On High Conversation Classes!
I think it all depends on the level of the students.
If your students are a decent level (intermediate or so) and you want to spark conversation, you have to give them things that they have a vested interest in. Sometimes it's a matter of finding a load of Taboo arguments (I can't recommend any particular sites because I can't post a link right now) but I suggest that you google taboo subjects and take it from there.
For example: "Should police carry guns" (one of many easy to find conversation starters).
Then, to stretch the activity you can put students into small groups of "for" and "against" thinking and brainstorming in the groups, and then finally have everybody come together to debate the topic.
Sometimes this works well, sometimes it doesn't. The best and easiest way to do it is by finding out what the students care about. For example, at the University I teach at they turn off the power at 11:00 PM, so the students have a lot to say about the merits and demerits of such a program!
Re: Tips On High Conversation Classes!
Re: Tips On High Conversation Classes!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Messiah 
Hi!
i´m an english teacher from brazil, i´ve been teaching for 5 years, and for me conversation classes during a long time are always a challenge.
because i don´t know if you feel the same, but sometimes i get bored with my own classes. i already used movies, citycoms, text, music.
but i think i should learn other ways to use the same stuff.
any of you feel the same!?!?
what do you usually do in this kind of classes?!?!
i mean to keep the students awake and interacting and on the same way learn more and get more vocabulary!
i would apreciate any help!!
thanx!!
Messiah
As they say ,every case is a new case. I always look at my new class from this point of viw, because the atomosphere is new ,the students are new,their personality is new.So I always look at a new class as a new experience .Mentally ready in advance, i can cope with that class well.Also I always try to use different methods for new classes in order NOT TOmake myself feel bored!
