Sunday 16th December
I really wasn’t looking forward to this: teaching teenagers, on a hot, weekend afternoon can be a nightmare, and the class size had mushroomed from 13 to 20 students. If it was like the Sunday class at another office, or one’s I’d endured at other centres, I’d have to reconsider my future with this company, or even in this profession.
Instead, they turned out be little darlings; motivated, responsive, polite and reasonably quiet. To paraphrase Eagles, teaching teens, “Can be Heaven, can be Hell!”
The early-comers were treated to the ‘Don’t say, “I’m fine,”‘ patter (see a previous post under teaching notes), and they actually warned each other to comply so students, even late-comers, answered with, “I’m good / great / OK.”
I told them I’d introduce them to a new idiom each week. We kicked off with:
hold your horses – meaning be patient, wait, don’t start yet.
First game was just a warm-up; what did they know about London ? This was in the form of a quiz, two teams shouting out the answers to such questions as the British currency, traditional British food, the Queen’s eldest son (Charles, not William), the name of the famous clock in London, what did 007 mean ? etc.
This centre really tries to promote students speaking (in English) as much as possible, so the first group work was plan a day for a friend of mine in HCM City – what would the friend need ?
We elicited a place to stay, food to eat, things to buy, places to visit, nightlife and how to get around.
This lead into showing a video of top attractions in London, for interest but also to boost vocabulary and expose the students to different accents.
The link is here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0r0VTos_wU&t=20s
I asked the students to listen out for all the adjectives and to notice how they are used, as well as the pronunciation and intonation. For example, we had, “beautiful Queen’s House,” “dazzling Crown Jewels,” “amazing city views,” etc. There was also a lot of new vocabulary and expressions (to keep something at bay). I then asked then to choose which attractions appealed to them (which ones they were interested in, wanted to visit). Finally, we learnt about the Prime Meridian 0 degrees that passes through London.
After the book work, we did activities guessing the personalities and occupations of five of my friends (see next post for photos). The students look at five of my friends and have to deduce (give me an idea) of what my friends are like – inside, not physically. Then they must guess what jobs they do.
I also encouraged forming long sentences using opinion expressions (in my opinion / I feel that / I think / for me … etc)
A great start to the session … let’s hope it continues … watch this space !
Thay Paul's Notes 