Excuse me, how do I get to...... ?
Whether you are lost in a foreign land yourself or someone who is foreign to your land is lost in your neighborhood, being able to explain how to get from point A to point B is a life saver. This
Smith’s School of English lesson is enjoyable and offers a great deal of new vocabulary. Once the vocabulary is practiced to the point of comfortability the student has a chance to role play using various maps and classroom tools. By the time this lesson is mastered getting and giving directions in English isn't so intimidating anymore!
Now the only problem is actually knowing where you are going in the first place..
3 comments:
ET: I’ve gone blank
I asked the student to name some Japanese baseball teams and she used her one point straight away.
Item：
My student for this lesson came into the class with a request to do directions, so she can explain to her customers at the hotel, where she works, how to get to Osaka Castle. I first got the directions cards and got her to match up the picture cards with the word cards. She learnt a few new words from this.
I then got her to pretend that I was her customer and got her to explain to me how to get to Osaka Castle, I tweaked some little things to make them more polite/formal as she wanted to know some polite English rather than the casual English she uses with her friends. While she did this she used some of the cards from earlier to fill in her blanks, so I was pleased that they helped her.
She was trying to describe what the water was called around the castle, she started to use ‘the river’ but she knew that this wasn’t right so I gave her the correct term, moat. Not every town in Japan, let alone the world, has a castle in the city with a moat around it so I didn’t expect her to know the name of it.
It was great to see that she was taking notes as we went, she ended up getting two pages worth.
She then wanted to try and explain how to get to Tsuruhashi as she said a lot of her customers want to eat meat and she thinks the steak houses are too expensive. She recommends going to Yakiniku restaurants in Tsuruhashi. I fixed one sentence for her and gave her a couple of options on how to say it.
The directions she gave me were very clear and I think if I was staying at her hotel, I would find them very helpful and get to Osaka castle and Tsuruhashi with no problem.
She also said that she had a little problem understanding some of her customers as they speak English too fast for her. I wrote up a couple of sentences she could use and she added these to her notes straight away.
One point: Let me sleep on it.
I put this up on the board and got her to try figure the meaning, she unfortunately had no luck this time round so I gave her the meaning of the expression and when it can be used, she found it easy after that.
Giving directions is very difficult, even for native speakers if they aren't familiar with the area. So I think that it's a great idea to pick a landmark that the students are familiar with in order to execute the "Directions" lesson with. That way, they are confident with giving directions to it, and the teacher can also help guide them because a famous site like Osaka Castle is a mutually recognizable landmark.
I did this lesson today with two orange level students at Smith's School of English Kyobashi. It was definitely not an easy lesson for most students. Honestly, I myself often get rather confused when it comes to directions.
After the usual review of their previous one-points, I placed the direction cards on the table and I heard both students giggle nervously. Clearly they both knew what a challenge they were facing. They did quite well in matching the picture cards and the expression cards, which was a good start. I then made them go through the expression cards twice to memorize the usuful phrases. I checked their work by flashing the picture cards and asking them to shout out the matching expressions. Once I was convinced they were ready for the next step, I directed them to the board where I already wrote down some key sentence patterns and phrases for asking and giving directions, and showed them how the expressions from the cards fit in an actual situation.
When all the preparations were done, I pulled out the Exercise book and turned to the direction page for practice 1. It was basically a simple map of a city, students A and B needed to take the roles to ask and give directions from point A to B. They both tried very hard from the beginning, but one of them apparently struggled with the expressions and had to frequently refer to her notes. I expected this to happen even when I was preparing for the lesson since I knew she was a lower orange student, so I was quite happy to see her trying really hard with the help of her notes.
I wasn't particularly sure if we'd have enough time for both an item and a routine in this lesson although I did prepare a routine just in case. But when I checked the clock as we finished Practice 1, I knew it'd be much better to cut the routine and do a bit more practice on giving directions.
After the challenging but fruitful session, both students commented that although difficult, it was a very practical lesson. The higher orange student mentioned that she was asked directions a few times before by foreigners but was always too nervous to offer any help, she felt much more confident after today's lesson.
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