July 3rd, 2010 by MaryWard
I’m so surprised, and positively so. We had a great class. This topic got my students participating, and talking. First we briefly talked about the topic of teenagers and text messaging, and then we went and did the vocab and listening comprehension on this worksheet Teen Texting Soars_Listening_MW.
They really had a lot to say on the topic. I asked them to work in small groups and make a list of how teenagers use text messaging in their countries, and then orally present and comment on them to the class. Some of them actually said teens used it to break up with others. Well, I couldn’t believe it, so I asked them if they thought it was OK to do so. We had a light ethical conversation about it and that was an added bonus. They always say they want to practice their conversation. Well, we certainly found a good talking point.
If I could go back and do it again, I would eliminate the second item in the ‘Before you listen’ section. I’d also give the audience a task to do as they listened to groups present their lists, like listen for vocabulary words included in the worksheet.
Tags: ESL/EFL/TEFL/TESOL/NorthStar Listening & Speaking Chapter 10/Listening/Speaking/Vocabulary/authentic listening/Conversation/technology and socializing/teenagers/text messaging
Posted in L/S 4, Unit 10, Listening and Speaking | No Comments »
May 21st, 2010 by judymiller
After the discussion on different cultural attitudes about sharing class notes, we went on to the big question of competition among students: good or bad?
The debate was prepared in two groups, each side preparing their arguments. Some of the quotes from my students:
- “Competition gets the lazy ones to work harder”
- “cooperation among students can teach more than a formal class”
- “competition spurs you on”
- “competition is discouraging”
The students felt the victory went to the side arguing for competition. I am not so sure that I agree with them, although that side definitely came up with some good arguments.
I had another idea for a debate on education, but we didn’t do it with this group: corporal punishment and whether it has a place in education.
With this group of students, the debate might have been too divisive among the different countries. But we did touch on it with bullying. Physical punishment for children – what does it really teach them?
Tags: class debate, class discussion, corporal punishment, efl, esl, esol, northstar, Pearson Longman, student competition, student cooperation, tefl, tesl, tesol
Posted in L/S 4, Unit 7, Listening and Speaking, Listening/Speaking 4 | No Comments »
May 17th, 2010 by judymiller
As I mentioned in the last post, I gave my students homework to answer a specific question about bullying. They also had to find expert opinions online. The next day was the discussion of their findings.
That class was very lively.
In general, the students correctly predicted the very negative effects of bullying on victims (lifelong psychological scarring) and the fact that shy or quiet children were often targeted — those who couldn’t fight back or were afraid, especially among girls.
But they did not predict the high rate of later criminal behavior among bullies. Sometimes students got “leadership” and bullying mixed up. Nor did they predict the studies revealing that bullies of both sexes were quite often victimized, beaten, or denigrated in their own homes.
The interesting point for everyone was how much this problem preoccupied people in all countries. In some countries, students committed suicide when they did not do well enough in school to please their families or were shamed in front of fellow students. In other places, it was tied to dating and rivalries among girls.
One question to research was how to prevent or stop bullying. The students were very skeptical about the “conflict resolution peer groups” used in many high schools in the U.S. today. They were interested in the fact that such efforts existed here while in most countries the problem is ignored. However, they doubted that anything could be done.
Next year, I would like to invite a speaker from one of these groups to speak to the students. This was a very lively discussion and in addition to fluency practice, we learned a lot of new vocabulary and a lot about each other’s countries and culture.
Tags: bullies, bullying, class discussion, discussion, efl, esl, esol, northstar, online research, Pearson Longman, research, tefl, tesl, tesol
Posted in R/W 4, Unit 7, Reading and Writing, Reading/Writing 4 | 1 Comment »
May 14th, 2010 by judymiller
Last time, my students discussed memories from school, and the subject of bullying came up across the board.
For the next class, I prepared a question sheet about bullying and the students worked on answering the questions to the best of their ability in small groups of mixed nationalities. The questions were:
- Why do some children become bullies?
- Why are some children victims of bullying?
- What should you do if you see bullying?
- What are the consequences of bullying for the victims? For the bullies?
For homework each group was given ONE of the questions to research on the web. They were told to find expert opinion on the issues by consulting reputable websites (and we discussed how to tell websites of value by looking on the web together as a class).
The students had to find answers to the question their group was assigned and report back to the class. They also had to compare their original thinking with the experts’ opinion.
I’ll report on the actual discussion next time.
Tags: bullies, bullying, class discussion, efl, esl, esol, northstar, online research, Pearson Longman, tefl, tesl, tesol
Posted in R/W 4, Unit 7, Reading and Writing, Reading/Writing 4 | No Comments »
May 12th, 2010 by judymiller
As I mentioned in the last post, we did a free writing activity on what my students remembered from their school days as children.
Almost all the students remembered some positive experiences learning about friendship or loyalty or how to get along with others. But students from all nine countries, from Western Europe to Eastern Europe to Asia and Latin America, remembered incidents of bullying as they grew up.
They said it was rampant and were very shocked to hear that it had not been a major problem in past generations. Now it seems ubiquitous. Each student (sadly) gave examples of bullying and the worst seemed to be among girls. We practiced indirect speech and paraphrasing by having another student summarize what had just been said and we compared experiences.
This gave an interesting background for what most of my students did not at first understand: home schooling. Put in this context – as a possible reaction to bullying and other negative influences — the home schooling movement from Reading One became less completely strange to them.
How have you all handled discussions of bullying with your students?
Tags: bullying, discussion, efl, esl, esol, free writing, home schooling, indirect speech, northstar, paraphrasing, Pearson Longman, summarizing, tefl, tesl, tesol
Posted in R/W 4, Unit 7, Reading and Writing, Reading/Writing 4 | No Comments »
May 10th, 2010 by judymiller
We’re wrapping up the term’s work and we ended with the NorthStar unit on education.
We started with Reading Two, the great story from Isaac Asimov called “The Fun They Had.” In the story, children from the future looked back on “the good old days” and how great it was to go to school (instead of relying on computer-learning at home). The children of the future were starved for the companionship and relationships that school can bring.
Then we asked the students to write for 5 minutes in free writing (not paying attention to errors but just brainstorming) on what they learned from other children in school: good and bad. Then they read their paragraphs to other students and commented on the results.
I’ll post the results of this activity next. How do you work with this particular unit?
Tags: computers, education, efl, esl, esol, free writing, Isaac Asimov, nortshstar, Pearson Longman, reading, teaching, tefl, tesl, tesol
Posted in R/W 4, Unit 7, Reading and Writing, Reading/Writing 4 | No Comments »
May 5th, 2010 by MaryWard
After we discussed how certain technologies drive people crazy, we practiced expressing frustration in pronunciation. Students often have problems hearing and producing emotion conveyed via pronunciation options, either by drawing out certain vowels, or increasing one’s volume. We supplemented Chapter 10 by looking at technology and socializing, or how social media have given rise to new ways to communicate face to face, and ways to avoid it.
I gave them this worksheet to accompany a video clip from the movie “He’s Just Not That Into You”. The clip shows two friends shopping at the drug store and discussing one’s misadventures in trying to get in touch with a potential date. The main character, Mary, is very frustrated about having to check seven electronic portals just to see if anyone has tried to get in touch with her.
- What tone do you think Mary uses when she says, “I can’t text. I’m just not charming via text.”?
Does she feel down about not being good at texting? Or, does she feel frustrated? I modeled the two ways of expressing those emotions and then we watched the clip.
The worksheet analyzes how her pronunciation manifests frustration, and offers students practice in this. It also preps them for the clip by reviewing vocabulary, main ideas, and offers two conversation activities: tell a frustrating story, explain when you like to and don’t like to use technology for socializing.
The students appreciated the topic. I saw that it generated a lot of good discussion and opportunities to use their English skills.
Tags: efl, emotion, esl, esol, frustration, northstar, Pearson Longman, pronunciation, socializing, technology, tefl, tesl, tesol
Posted in L/S 4, Unit 10, Listening and Speaking, Listening/Speaking 4 | No Comments »
April 26th, 2010 by judymiller
After our discussion about Passive Voice, we looked at common contexts in English that take Passive:
- In science experiments the agent (the grad student or the professor) is not as important as what was discovered.
- The lab assistant obtained DNA from the remains. The lab assistant is not important.
- DNA cells were obtained from the remains. (by the lab assistant = can be left out)
- We don’t really know who or what the agent is.
- All questions will be answered within 24 hours. We don’t know who will answer them – maybe a group of employees of the corporation.
- We want to avoid responsibility.
- Mr Dupont and I will lay off 100 workers. ->
- One hundred workers will be laid off. This is more impersonal and makes it seem that no one is responsible.
As an example from the news, I gave the students this news article from many (many) years ago. I also gave them these exercises to help them see that the passive voice is often used to shift the focus from the agent to an impersonal source.
It’s easy to see from the article that not much information was available and no one wanted to say anything. Nothing was sure. However, the papers needed news so the reporters wrote this article.
The press was a really interesting topic for my students and I think the lessons with this chapter were very successful.
Tags: esl, esol, media, news, northstar, passive voice, teaching, tefl, tesl, tesol
Posted in L/S 4, Unit 1, Listening and Speaking, Listening/Speaking 4, R/W 4, Unit 1, Reading and Writing, Reading/Writing 4 | No Comments »
April 23rd, 2010 by judymiller
Hi again!
To review the passive voice (in the unit on media), my colleague asked the students to bring in news articles of their choice and in summarizing them, use the passive voice when needed. That brought us to the question: when is it needed?
I planned a class to explain the use of the passive voice and to make sure students don’t OVERUSE it. In other languages it may be used much more than in English and in different ways.
Although in general, English prefers the active voice, there are some contexts when we prefer the passive.
Example:
Active: The doctor operated on the President yesterday.
Passive: The President was operated on yesterday.
The active sentence is awkward because the subject of the sentence is “the doctor” and the subject is supposed to be the most important focus of the sentence. But the really important person in the sentence is “the President.” Thus shifting the focus from the doctor to the President is logical and the passive voice helps to take the focus away from the agent and onto the important person.
Posted in L/S 4, Unit 1, Listening and Speaking, Listening/Speaking 4, R/W 4, Unit 1, Reading and Writing, Reading/Writing 4 | No Comments »
