Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Let's Talk!
Open ended conversation with topic specific discussion questions. You never can tell which question will spark interest for the student. Smith’s School of English
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Item: The Future
This lesson was packed with three ready-to-learn high level students and the first two parts of the loop went well but the part where I had the most fun was our discussion on the future.
I had the students envision their future by way of a magic ball. The right mood was achieved by way of a plastic globe that just happened to be lying on the desk. The students looked into our makeshift magic ball, one at a time, each one trying to predict his/her own future.
The first student immediately conjured up an elaborate vision of her wedding, set 5 years into the future. She placed herself in Hawaii, celebrating her wedding with her family, friends, and future husband. When another student questioned her about the groom-to-be, she sheepishly admitted that she wasn’t able to picture her mystery man. She preferred to leave that part a secret and let herself be surprised.
The next student was eager to announce his future plans to become a high school teacher, either for mathematics or English. Upon hearing this, I jokingly told him about the spare trial room in Smith’s School of English. He said that he would consider the position sometime in the future but was really keen on teaching in a high school.
The third student was looking forward to retiring so he had no difficulty picturing his future all set up for him. He would be able to finally relax and enjoy his hobbies since he does not have much time to do so with his current obligations. Several years from now, he is quite certain that he will be focusing his creative energies into his artwork and might even open up his own gallery. He also promised to give all of his classmates free tickets to the grand opening ceremony.
Many more possibilities were presented for their individual futures but when asked about the fate of humankind, all three students answered in a very similar manner. They all predicted that there would be world peace and that weapons such as guns or bombs would cease to exist – after having been disassembled or melted down for recycling. There was speculation about science evolving to a point where the most horrible diseases of the world would finally be cured. One random thought was that humans themselves would evolve to a point where their genetic structure would merge with that of a bat’s, therefore endowing them with gigantic bat wings.
Talking about the future was a most interesting way to spend this part of the lesson.
Food & Drinks
I had a rather“interesting”conversation with my 6pm student today talking about food.
We started out our class as usual with the previous one-point after the initial small talk. When I pulled out the Let’s Talk book, my student leaned over and seemed pleasantly surprised that we were going to talk about food and drinks."Oh, I like food!” He smiled and before I had the chance to direct him to the first question, he was telling me about his very first dining experience at a Nepalese restaurant recently and how huge the special Nan bread was there. He then went on to telling me all the different kinds of curry that he had tried. Anybody could see that curry was his favorite food as he talked about it with such passion. It was great to see students talking about their experiences and communicating in the target language.
I probably should have stuck to the topic of“favorite foods and drinks”. Unfortunately I made a terrible mistake of asking him question 2 on the topic page, “what do you think is not delicious to eat?” Honestly, I did not expect what I heard and am still really grossed out as of this moment. “ Fruit bat soup” was the answer from my student. After the initial shock, I managed to find out why he would even think of such a dish. Apparently he was offered this soup when he was on holiday in Palau. The good news was, he wasn't crazy enough to try it! I regretting asking the question because the answer was so gross, but it did lead us to a lively conversation about different kinds of food in different countries and how different cultures were.
Item - The Environment
This lesson started off pretty casually, for as soon as we sat down in the classroom I challenged the student to tell me something that I wouldn't believe. His one point "You won't believe this, but (on the shinkansen to shin-Yokohama I saw a Japanese actor who is a little famous!)" This was indeed interesting, and when I questioned him on it he proceeded to tell me that the actor was sitting in front of him, and when he reclined he could see the actor's face very close up!
The routine went smoothly, and the Let's Talk item chosen for the lesson was about the environment. I was pretty excited to talk to him about it, because I guessed that he would be the kind of student who had a lot to say about it. My guess was correct, for in fact we had an animated discussion about global warming and co2 emissions.
Whatever happened to "the greenhouse effect", anyway? It is always referred to as global warming these days, and that metaphor which used to get tossed around so often seems to have evaporated. I learned that in Japanese it is still referred to as the greenhouse effect, however, or the warming house effect, more correctly.
He challenged my positive ideas about Japan helping developing countries with their knowledge of environmentally friendly policies, and gave some very sceptical opinions in a little rough English. Though I couldn't do much about the opinions, I could certainly help him correct his English!
At the end of the lesson the board was covered with all sorts of tricky terms, including ageing population, increasing, decreasing x and y, incinerate and something that surprised me - constant warmth. For when I asked him what global warming meant in daily life he gave said it means that the surface temperature keeps warm. This must be directly due to living in Osaka, with its overcast hot summers of suffering! For most people would say that global warming raises the temperature in the world. I enjoyed this focus.
Though the student didn't take many notes during the lesson, he made it clear that at the end he wanted to copy everything down, and for me not to erase it yet! This indicated simply that he'd been really into the natural conversation, but didn't want to lose the new vocabulary that he had learnt.
His onepoint was "Fortunately/Unfortunately" and he used it with reference to the environmental topic, which was a quick application I liked to see.
Item - Movies
I had a green level female student and a high red male student at the end of the evening. After a quick review of Routine 9, I decided to put the focus of the lesson on guided conversation. Since I knew from previous encounters that both my students liked watching English movies when they had time, I thought some topics on movies would probably spark the conversation pretty easily.
I first had the students telling me about the last movie they saw. The girl immediately started telling us about "Love Actually". Apparently she saw it the second time on DVD during New Year holiday with her boyfriend and decided that it was the best movie to see on a date! It took the guy slightly longer, he smiled appologetically and said that he couldn't remember the title of the movie.The girl and I both encouraged him to tell us the story, and maybe we'd be able to help him with the title. He tried very hard and managed to give us an outline of the story, and that was more than enough, the other student and I almost shouted the title simultaneously, "Bruce Almighty."
From there we moved on to talk about our favorite actors, favorite movies, worst movies, first movie on a date, and so on so forth. It was great to be able to share personal interests and opinions freely with these students and I felt we certainly knew each other a lot better than before.
Seeing as how tomorrow is Valentine's Day, I thought that it would be appropriate to choose Dating from the Let's Talk folder at Smith's School of English Kyobashi as the topic of the hour.
Both ladies were very enthusiastic about the subject, having quite a lot of information to share about previous dating experiences. They didn't need much coaxing to describe their ideal date and preferred dating environment. They even joked about going on a date with Johnny Depp and how they would expect him to pay for everything. We had a good laugh about the thought of poor Johnny Depp having to pay for so many expensive meals. We eventually got around to talking about konpas and blind dates. Neither of them had ever been on a blind date and didn't fancy giving it a try but they both had plenty of information to share on konpas. Apparently konpas just aren't their cup of tea.
As I prepared to wrap up the item, we had a bit of a mini discussion on whether it was better to be married or single. There were a few divided opinions, including that of Gavin who appeared in the doorway to give his two cents worth. However, by the end of the lesson, there was a general consensus that to be married was more emotionally satisfying than to be single. Overall, we had a very great in-depth conversation with this very worthwhile topic.
Item: Famous People
I like to use the Let's Talk book as an item for high level students, although each lesson provides specific questions related to the topic, you never really know which ones will trigger a lively discussion in the class.
I prepared 'Famous People' item for this particular group of 3 at Smith's School of English Kyobashi. After reviewing the previous one-points for each student, I set out to asking students questions about being famous and famous people. When asked to name some famous people, usually students would find it easier to mention movie stars or well-known comedians as starters, so I was slightly surprised when two of them started to talk about Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. Apparently both of them were interested in talking about politicians than movie stars. I was a bit worried at first for the only girl in the class thinking she might not want to participate, fortunately she also followed the recent events of US election. The three of them had different opinions on who should be the next US president, which was great because I was then able to engage them in a discussion/debate!
When we came to almost the end of the item, I asked if any of them wanted to be famous. Surprisingly they unanimously said no this time. When asked why, they each gave me more than one disadvantages of being a celebrity!
It was great fun having students sharing their opinions with each other.
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