Adult Class Level 1, Lessons 1 & 2. Portrait, Landscape, Still Life

19th December 2018

The theme of the first class was portrait galleries – what can be seen there, what a portrait was and what other types of painting / photographs there are.

For review, and as a warm-up exercise, I asked the students what types these paintings were:

• 

• 

One is a portrait, one a landscape, the last is called a still life.

Still means not moving – for example, if a policeman shouts, “Stand still !” it means do NOT move. So a still life is a painting of objects (usually fruit or flowers).

What do YOU think of these paintings ? There is no ‘right’ answer – just think about them and give your opinion using expressions:

In my opinion ….. For me ….. I think ….. I feel …….

This is a nice class, about 14 students, evenly split between ladies and men. They are motivated and enthusiastic, which makes the teacher’s job much easier (and then some).

Today I introduced some British history; a young lady sneezed and I said, “Bless you.” The reason we say this goes back to the plague.

People who got this disease would die in five days. One sign that a person was getting the plague was sneezing so when a person sneezed, their friends and family would say, “Bless you,” meaning God protect you.

Today, if someone sneezes, we say, “Bless you,” the reply is then, “Thank you,” and the first person then says, “You’re welcome.”

Football was also a subject as tonight’s theme was ‘A Night To Remember’, and many people will remember last Saturday. Vietnam beat Malaysia and won the AFF Championship. The score was 1 – 0 (one – nil)

Other words tonight were bonus (something extra e.g. a Christmas bonus meaning extra money) and present (a gift at birthdays or Christmas / Tet).

Tonight’s pronunciation included telling the time: It’s nine o’clock = it’s ninea clock. Then the date … today is the 19th so we practised the ‘th’ sound.

For music, we listened to Led Zepplin ‘Whole Lotta Love’ (in standard English ‘A whole lot of love’)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQmmM_qwG4k

The first part of the lesson was book work – a lot of listening (which most students find very difficult), so the second part was totally students producing, practising grammar (past simple) and then asking each other questions, moving around the room, trying to speak to new people.

This helps with speaking and listening skills, as well as the grammar.

Many thanks for my students for helping me with my Tieng Viet, and sorry for continuing to mispronounce their names …. rat xin loi !