Wednesday, January 16, 2008
L & R Routines
Regardless of the language, in daily life we ask and are required to answer many straightforward and sometimes challenging questions. The Smith’s School of English
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One-point: B16
Most students recognize their one-point from the previous lesson when they see it on the board, which is why I try to write it on the board before the lesson starts. This was no exception for my student at 4pm today. When she read it on the board, she giggled and said “This morning, I thought I couldn't be bothered coming to the English class because it was raining heavily, but fortunately it cleared in the afternoon.” I was not surprised as she is a yellow level student.
Item: Directed conversation
I had prepared a news article for this lesson, but because I knew she enjoys chatting, I was ready to let the conversation flow. So we ended up chatting about her job and workplace. It was rather interesting for me to listen to her perspective of practices and rules in Japanese companies. She also seemed to enjoy the opportunity to practice her English as well as communicate her ideas and opinions. I supported her with board notes or answered questions where needed while making sure she got her 70% talk time.
Routine: 11
For her level, I decided to just go through the questions quickly and move on to making a new story. As I expected, she flew through the 10 questions. I then asked her to ask me the same questions and I made up the answers on the spot. When we finished, I got her telling me my story based on my answers. She only made a few small mistakes(tense, verb related)during the process, which I corrected at the end of the lesson.
One-point: B45
She already knew the phrase “be impressed with”, so it was a very easy finish.
Adapting the routine questions for the student's individual level is definitely the best way to go. The great thing about routines is that they're so flexible and can be applied to daily conversation.
E.T. You won’t believe this but…
After a short conversation on the habits of ladybugs, I ask the student to recall the previous [One Point] and to make an example. She says, “You won’t believe this but I lost my money.” I ask her to clarify what she means by this and she indicates that the money somehow, somewhere, dropped out of her pocket. So I tell her that in this case, it would be best to say, “You won’t believe this but I dropped my money.” Otherwise, it would sound like one had lost money at the poker tables. She jots down a note in her notebook and fixes up her example.
Routine 6 – The Baby
This routine practically flies by because the student is very fond of children. She then goes through the questions, laughing at my answers to the last 2 questions. Afterwards, she responds eagerly to the questions, having fun herself with the last 2 questions since she is allowed to use her imagination. The word ‘diaper’ ends up on the board in the new vocabulary box.
Item – Prebuild: Entertaining a foreigner
She has been studying English diligently the past few weeks so she races through the flashcards, matching up the English to the Japanese. Once she’s gone over a few difficult to pronounce words, and we’ve cleared up the meaning of ‘charcoaled’, I test her memory. This time I go through the Japanese cards and ask her to remember the English meanings. She does this quite easily with the exception of the longer descriptions where she pauses to write them down. Eventually we get to the second set of cards and I ask her if she carries any good luck charms. She answers negatively so I ask her how many she has at home. Again, she shakes her head and says she doesn’t buy them anymore. When she discovers that I have bought four so far this year, her eyes widen in surprise. She asks me why and I just shrug and reason that they are pretty and make good souvenirs.
One Point – I’m used to (A) because (B)
I start off by completing the sentence with my own imagination. “I’m used to Japan’s hot weather because I have lived here for a long time.” I explain what ‘gross out’ means and urge her to come up with her own sentences. She finishes off with, “I’m used to studying English because I come to Smith’s often.”
ET: Since this student was brand new and today was her first lesson, there wasn’t a one point to review. I established trust with her through a friendly introduction followed by moving into a lesson format she was familiar with from her trial lesson.
Routine: 12 Shopping 2
The student wrote down the 10 questions that I gave her verbally. I checked to make sure that she had written them down correctly, fixing up a few grammar errors along the way. Then I got her to ask me the 10 questions in order while I invented a story to match the question structure. At the end of the story, I went through the questions once more, this time having her recall the original answers. We got stuck in a few places as she revealed that she hadn’t actually understood a verb here and there. After going through a translation for the necessary verbs, we returned to the areas that had proven to be difficult at first, this time smoothly progressing to the end.
Item: Intermediate – Questions
I wrote up all the major question words on the board and we spent a few minutes taking turns asking each other questions. I helped her to rephrase some of her questions to make them more grammatically correct and we chatted a bit about Canada when she revealed that she had just returned from a home-stay in Banff. Then I took out the animal question cards and went through them, writing up the unknown animal names on the board. After that, we played a game using questions to guess a hidden animal.
One point: That’s just a rumor.
I asked her if she was familiar with Tom Cruise and she said ‘Yes’. Then I asked her if she knew Ayumi Hamasaki, and she did. Then I told her, “Tom Cruise got divorced yesterday because he will get married with Ayumi Hamasaki tomorrow.” She stared at me in disbelief until I gestured to the board. She then responded with, “That’s just a rumor.”
ET: I haven’t (A) for ages because (B)
You won’t believe this but …
Today there are two students so there are two one points to review. The two students start off by giving a little recap of their past week and one of the ladies mentions that she has just come back from Taiwan. In response to this, her classmate says, “I haven’t been abroad for ages because I haven’t saved any money.” However, since that first student has just returned from a trip, she has forgotten how to use her one point. I make a joke out of this as an example, “You won’t believe this but I can’t remember my one point.” She grins and repeats the example and then makes up her own. “You won’t believe this but this price was high.” I correct her with, “You won’t believe this but this cost a fortune.”
Routine: R8 – Shopping
We review this routine by using the questions out of context. I have the students first write down the questions and then take turns asking me while I make up the story. I make sure that it conforms to the questions and that they have understood the content of the story. Then I go back and rephrase the questions to see if they were paying attention. We go over some new words and phrases and eventually get through the review with very little trouble.
Item: Let’s Talk – Television
The beginning of this item is a bit tricky because one student denies that she watches the TV because she is too tired after work everyday. But after mentioning the Japanese animation ‘Doraemon’ she eventually admits that she does sometimes watch the TV. We go through each of the questions, pausing here and there to get into a bit more depth. Each student is encouraged to give her own opinion and elaborate on it as well as ask questions of her own. Both students generally agree with each other except when it comes to which TV actor they think is the most handsome.
One point: Even if…
I give them the example, “Even if it rains tomorrow, I will still ride my bicycle.” They aren’t too sure about the usage even after I translate it into Japanese so I try again. “Even if a dinosaur eats this building, I will still come to work next Tuesday.” They look at me with wide eyes and repeat “dinosaur?!!” indicating that they know the meaning of the word. Now that they understand the general feeling behind the one point, they try to make their own example. The first student says, “even if I have a cold, I will still come to Smith’s.” The student who is just back from Taiwan struggles a bit but when I ask her if she can stay home from work if it snows, she answers, “even if it snows, I will still go to work.” Both students leave happy and with their notebooks full of useful information.
E.T. I haven’t (A) for ages because (B).
This is a good one point at the beginning of the year, because the students are already reflecting on last year and what's to come in the new year.
Routine: 13
One of the students in this class had already done routine 13 before, but the other student has not. It's quite a tricky L&R routine, so I'm confident it needs review anyway. When I ask the student if he remembers it, he confesses that he has in fact forgotten most of it. I have already written the routine up on the board, so I go through the story fairly quickly, at a native pace, and alternate the sentences for them both to repeat. At the end I ask them both the questions, knowing I need not model them because they are green and yellow levels. Their use of reported speech is fine, but they both have a few problems with identifying who said what in the story. I decide to ask them to act it out, so that they feel comfortable with identifying the two speakers. I ask one of them to be "I", and the other to be "my friend". Not only do they use the direct dialouge, but afterwards they add "she replied" and "she shouted back." It was a fun exercise and was nice to see high level students challenged by a routine.
Item: Vocabulary 16
This flew by surprisingly quickly. Both students were familiar with the meaning of most of the words and just needed some help using them correctly in sentences. One word that we spent a lot of time on was "meticulous". They were both very interested in it, and using it in the widest situation possible. They two students were a good match in this regard, because while one enjoyed talking about what he already knew of the word, the other asked questions like "can I use it in this context?" A question which I myself didn't always have to answer!
One point: B34
At the end I said, "for me, eating natto is enjoyable because it's healthy", and then asked, "what's enjoyable for you?" one replied "I enjoy..." and I asked him to use the same format as I had just done, which they both did beautifully.
Simple past tense was the focus of this lesson. As I had the same student once last week and she had some difficulty understanding the Japan Sea story, I thought she could use some more practice on simple past tense. For the other student, he was a pink level who had only been with us for a short time, so the simple past lesson was just perfect.
E.T.
Our lesson started with the previous one-points: B7 and B16. Neither of them had any trouble giving me an example, it seemed the previous teachers did a great job explaining them. "Today I feel bad because the weather is so miserable." "I can't be bothered to go out tonight because it's nice and warm at home."
Item-Past 1
I then introduced the topic of today by jotting down "Simple Past" on the board, and explained how English verbs change to past tense. I wrote down some frequently used verbs (play, visit, start, listen, watch, go, have, take, etc) and encouraged the students to give me the past tense forms. When this task was completed, I offered to put all the past forms in two categories. We then went through the picture cards in the form of Q&A dialogues, during which some new verb phrases were also added to the vocabulary box. Once this was done, we moved on to Page 9 of the basic exercise book, where the students challenged themselves with more Q&A dialogues in past tense. By the time they finished this, I knew they were ready for something a bit more complicated than drilling, the Japan Sea story!
Routine- Japan Sea
We first reviewed the Japan Sea story quickly without any problem with verb forms. I then dictated the 10 questions, made up a story out of context by answering all the questions read out in turns by my students, and then focused primarily on getting each of them to come up with a new story by answering the same 10 questions. The students took their turns to ask and answer questions, as a coach, my job was simply making necessary corrections and offering occasional guidance when the student had trouble bridging the questions smoothly. By the end of the lesson, we had two stories about weekend shopping and friend's birthday party!
One-point: A2.1
"Just between you and me, ..." After my simple explanation, one of the students said with a mischievous smile on his face " Just between you and me, I am a girl!" Well, we definitely won't be telling anyone about that!
Routines have a great tendency to draw out those little mistakes that are preventing the student from sounding fluent. I am often surprised at how much a higher level may struggle within a routine. For this reason I tend to think of the usage of the routines as slightly different for high level students and low level students. Whereas I encourage the low level students to practice asking, understanding and answering the questions, for high level students I like to use them to find weaknesses and let them correct these if they can. Some of our higher level students have entire routines memorized, but the routine questions are still of value out of context.
When I first found out who my 7pm students were going to be tonight, I was a bit worried as to what lesson I should prepare. These 3 students had been here at Smith's School of English Kyobashi for more than 5 years and they knew our lesson materials inside out. After carefully checking each of the students' files, I decided to focus on the application of the 10 questions from Routine 10- Visit to the Hospital.
Our class started as usual with small talks and the previous one-points. To familarize them with the questions, I then did a quick review of Routine 10 by reading out the story. Since they had all at least done this routine once, it only took me a couple of minutes to get them ready to use the questions out of context. The students took their turns in asking and answering questions, creating their own story either based on real experience or total fiction. They did a pretty good job although once in a while, I had to help them out with bridging some of the questions.
After the Q&A practice, we had a lively converstaion about our respective hospital visits and I learned about some interesting customs that you need to observe here in Japan if you visit someone in hospital.
Today's one-point: A2.1
"Just between you and me,..."
Everybody knew this one-point, so we shared a secret!
I started off the lesson with L & R routine 10 questions out of context. This intermidiate student had never done this before, as he is quite new, and he had a bit of difficulty listening as I dictated the questions to him, so he asked me to repeat myself a few times. I glanced at his notes and helped him out if he'd written anything drastically incorrect. He then asked me the questions, and I answered, quite slowly and carefully, and he seemed to be making mental notes of my answers.
In the next step I asked him the questions, but I changed them to say "When did I make a promise?" Students usually catch on to this quickly after doing it for a while, and can remember most of the answers. This student, never having done it before, just wasn't ready! He was listening to my answers only in so far as to make his own answers of similar ilk. He could remember parts of my answers, but not the complete phrase. For example in the question "what is the problem with most of my friends?" he knew it was something about Tuesdays and work, but couldn't make heads or tails of a sentence. I encouraged him as we went through the questions, and helped him out quite a bit with remembering. It was good to see him really try, when he knew what was going on, and he didn't get at all flustered, but was in good cheer. In the end he said that next time he was going to listen very carefully! A very good lesson to learn, and I'm sure he won't get caught out next time.
Many students who have a lot of business appointments really appreciate this L and R routine because it allows them to practice questions and answers that pertain to their meetings and such.
I was doing this routine the other day with a high level student who thought that it might be easy to breeze through. Actually, he found the questions to be quite difficult to answer. He couldn't anticipate what the next question might be and was therefore put on the spot when it seemed to come out of the blue at him. At Smith's School of English Kyobashi, we use routines like "The Japan Sea" to prepare the students for encountering similar question-and-answer scenarios in the English speaking world.
Once he had gotten through answering the questions, and taking down a lot of notes in the process, he was caught off guard once again as I urged him to now ask me the questions. Luckily he had written them down in his notebook so he could easily read them aloud. But with enough practice, he would soon be asking them from the top of his head instead of from his notes. I know this for a fact because we have many students who can just shoot off these questions naturally and without hesitation because they have practiced them very hard in the classroom.
Smith’s School of English
I had a lesson with a lovely red level student this evening at Smith's School of English Kyobashi. The moment she walked into the classroom she started talking about the insanely long lines of chocolate shoppers at the local shopping mall on her way here. When I asked whether she bought any chocolate for her boyfriend, she said with a big smile that she was waiting for her boyfriend to buy her some chocolate!
Our conversation continued for the good half of the lesson covering topics related to chocolates, Valentine's Day traditions, romantic dating spots, and so on. Before we both realised it, there was only 15 minutes left for the routine section of the lesson.
I prepared Routine 9 (Finnegan's Bar) for this lesson, she had done all the other intermediate routines once or twice, but Routine 9 was the first for her. I decided to skip the L shape hint bar on the board since I believed that she was capable of understanding the story without the help of it, but I suggested she take some notes while listening. She took my advice and once I finished reading out the story to her, I dictated the 10 questions. When this was done, she asked if I could repeat the story again, which I did of course, and she practically flew through the 10 questions! She did have difficulty understanding "do the trick", but after I gave her a couple of examples using the phrase, she got it completely.
We didn't have enough time to go through the questions out of context, but at the end of lesson she commented that the routines were quite challenging for her but she liked them! When I suggested we do the questions out of context and she tell me a story of hers next lesson, she agreed enthusiastically.
E.T.
The previous lesson’s one point for both of these students was the same – “I am (not) used to (a) because (b).” When I asked them what they were not used to, they really wanted to tell me what they were used to, so I happily let them do that, but then asked them what they weren’t used to as well.
Routine – Routine 7 The Restaurant
In this lesson I dictated the first 8 questions of this routine to the students. This went extremely smoothly, as both students quickly and accurately wrote down the questions. This is a sign that the listening ability of these pink students has improved over the time I have been teaching them.
This time, I told them, I want them to ask me the questions in past tense. I wanted them to ask me about events that happened yesterday. As the questions are almost all in present tense, it meant they had to think about how to change each question when asking me. This is beneficial for the student, not only to practice tenses, but thinking about the question when asking it, rather than just reading it, lets them remember it better.
The first question posed a first problem in past tense. “What’s happening today?” was said to me as “What did happening yesterday?” I wrote “what did happen...” on the board, and asked him about the past tense. He didn’t seem to know it, so I filled it in, and he read the sentence from the board. The second question from the other student was correct, and it progressed easily through the rest of the 8. For the 9th question I had the student “imagine” it. He chose a simple question from the end of another routine “How did you feel?” Showing that he had some concept of finalizing the story, as well.
After I had answered all the questions, I had the students switch, and ask the opposite questions. So one student asked question one the first time around, and this time the other student got to ask question one. This second time, instead of me answering, the other student would answer with the answers I had given them the first time around. Also, the had to change the question not only into past tense, but to be relevant for my answers. It sounds complicated, but in fact is very simple So, for example, the second question, originally “What are you going to do” was changed to “What did she do?” with the student answer of “She went to a sushi restaurant”. For some of the more complicated answers, I wrote them up on the board as they answered them, to make it easier for them to spot mistakes and correct them.
This whole process took twenty minutes of the lesson, which meant that there was 20 minutes left for the item.
Item – Customs
I wrote up the questions asked at customs on the board, and let the students copy it into their notebooks. I wrote it up in two colours, answers and questions, and then had the students roleplay the text with the picture cards a few times. When this went smoothly, I had them roleplay a similar dialogue in the book that involved reactionary responses like “what? Who me?” and I encouraged them to use emphasis on these parts to make it more fun and let us have a few laughs. When this dialogue had been gone through a few times, I closed the book and had them make a similar dialogue from the top of their heads. Admittedly they cheated a little, for some of the questions were still on the board! This is usually a great test at the end of the lesson to see how much of the dialogue they’ve taken in, and can respond to.
There was now a few minutes left for the one point,
One point “I want (A person) to (B) because (C)”.
For example, “I want (my friend) to (cut my hair) because (he is the best hairdresser!)”, which was greeted with one student saying “I want (my mother) to (cook for me) because (I live alone now)”. Excellent.
Smith's School of English.
routine 6-
This is one of my favorite Smith's School of English routines. At one time or another in our lives we have (or will have) the opportunity to take care of a baby, pet, plant, or living thing that needs tender loving care. Most beginner students have difficulty understanding the "look after" or "take care of" phrasal verbs. So this gives them a chance to dive right in with realistic hands on experience.
Also I like the way this routine has an open ended question at the end. This allows the students to stretch their imaginations so they can really comprehend what they have just learned.
I had a high level student last Saturday who works at a trading company and uses English almost every day answering phones, but gets nervous every time the phone rings. I learned from our first lesson a while back that she didn't come here for business English classes, she came here mainly to improve her communicative confidence so that one day, she would feel comfortable speaking English in any situation.
ET
After the chitchat about her week, we started our lesson as usual from the previous one-point, “if you go to …I recommend you to …because…”. I was told that if I go to Kinosaki, I should try the delicious crabs there. Another tip for gourmet food from the locals!
Item
We went through a news article about hotdog eating contest and exchanged our ideas and opinions regarding speed eating as well as fast food. I focused mainly on developing a natural conversation with the student, encouraging her to speak her mind and helping her put her ideas in words. By doing this, I was able to help her build the confidence to speak, to communicate.
Routine
I picked an intermediate routine for the lesson—visit to the hospital. Many high level students seem to think that the routines are too easy for them, but a teacher will know this is not true once he/she goes through one routine. Since this is a green level student, I skipped the L shape hints, and jumped straight to the story. She had no trouble answering the 10 questions, but when I started giving her a story out of context by answering the same 10 questions, her eyes widened and she was apparently amazed that such easy questions could lead to a personal and interesting story. When we finished, I asked about her hospital experiences and this again started a full-on conversation about dos and don’ts regarding hospital visits in different countries.
One-point
We finished our lesson with a one-point “I’m heading over to Tokyo.”
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