Pardon ?

I have been teaching a young Chinese student who was unable to communicate at all on his first day - unless I wrote it down for him !He was able to understand the letters of the alphabet and could write and spell words correctly when I spelt them out. He seems to be able to read quite well. He lacks confidence in speaking and lacks voacbulary as well as some basic grammar, though he seems to pick that up in basic writing tasks quite well. Having spent a couple of hours in a one to one class with him, which was very tiring for us both, I began to realize that one of the main problems seems to be pronunciation. He is so used to his presumably Chinese teacher's pronunciation and specifically lack of connected speech, that he cannot understand if words or sentences are not pronounced in the same way Example: How old are you ? pronounced with a very Chinese accent - "Ha ol ar you ?" sounds very different when the words are connected together as we do in English. Having recognised this, I began to show him how we run words together and he practised this and was soon able to say it and recognise it better. We also worked on word / syllable stress, such as in the question: Where are you from ? The Chinese tend to stress the word " you" , whereas we stress the word "from" generally. I used my musical arm signals for this - showing how the tune goes up / down according to which word is stressed. He tried diligently to copy this and was soon sounding much more English. I am hoping that as he becomes more aware of these sounds/ intonations, he will be able to understand them when he hears them and produce them too.
We did lots of basic questions and answers in the first lesson, and for homework I asked him to use the same questions to interview his host family at home, in order to practise communicating with them and to get know them a bit more too.

In the second lesson, I also realised that he needed some basic essential phrases to make communication easier - phrases such as " Pardon? " " Sorry ? " " Can you say that again please ? " I tried to teach him: " I don't understand" - but he didn't understand the concept ! Generally though we are getting there and he is looking happier and more relaxed, smiling a little more too !

Kaboom !

Needed to liven up a lesson that included lots of practice of when to use past simple or past continuous ,some phrasal verbs, plus a test. So we then played Kaboom ! An empty grid ( like in battleships ) is put onto the board, and I had prepared 2 different sets of 10 questions beforehand, as well as having a copy of the grid on paper, but filled in with: Q, K or 5 in each square. The class was split into two teams and had to choose a square in turns. If they chose a square that had Q in it ( on my grid ) they had to answer a question, and got 5 points if they got it right, or it went to the other team.If they chose a square with 5 in it , they automatically got 5 points, but if they chose a square with K in it - it was " Kaboom ! " ie: they lost all their points ! The questions were general knowledge questions , 2 different sets - one on the UK and one on Plymouth, so we played two games. The students enjoyed it and were very engaged, including student O who was almost falling asleep in the grammar part of the lesson, but came to life when we played the game ! Perhaps I should use it to practise grammar or spelling in the future....I did think afterwards though that I should have less "K" s on the grid, as at the end of the game both teams got a " kaboom ! " and lost all their points !

Corrections basketball

My intermediate class had prepared for a writing test ( It is a Mayflower College tradition to have a test every Friday morning, marked out of 100 ! )- they were to write an email to an old friend,with whom they had recently got into contact again, which would practise the present continuous again. After some further correcting and revising, they set about their test, whilst I prepared a game for afters ! Whilst checking their work before the test, I had made a note of some of their mistakes. I then wrote the incorrect sentences in quite large writing one each on a separate piece of scrap A4 paper ( on the back of scrap worksheets )Once the test had ended, and I had marked it at break time, we then used the scraps of paper and played Corrections Basketball. The class was in two teams, when shown an incorrect sentence on A4 paper from the front, they had to raise their hand if they thought they could correct it (which they then did with a red felt tip pen ). If they got it right , they could screw up the paper and aim for the waste paper basket , that was placed strategically at the front of the room on a chair. If they scored a basket they got a point for their team. They enjoyed this a lot, especially student O who had complained ( jokingly ) that we hadn't played any games the day before ! I'm not sure what the new young teacher thought, though, who came into the room to speak to a student ! She came in just as a screwed up ball of paper was being thrown into the bin from the back of the class and the students all cheered !
I then returned the tests to the students, they had done quite well on the whole, some had more problems with spelling and or grammar than others , but the content was generally good and the style appropriate for an informal email.One student in particular had written a near perfect piece of writing, and one which he was then going to use to write to a long lost friend he had recently got the email address of.
They were then given a pairwork speaking task, using the present continuous to describe a beach scene to their partner, who drew what they were told - E.g: on the left there is a boy, he is flying a kite, a man is swimming in the sea etc. It would have been better to brainstorm beach scene vocab first,though they managed really quite well, asking for a few bits of vocab and checking their bi-lingual dictionaries too.
To finish the lesson, we did a pictionary game - two teams , with one person drawing a picture from a sentence given by me, and their team mates had to say the correct sentence in full ( A man is stealing a TV from a house )- this usually took several guesses and several attempts at getting the full sentence right, including all parts of the present continuous verb being present !

My lunchtime was spent photocopying worksheets for next week and beginning to prepare ideas for resources and task for those. I also tried in vain to warn a new teacher about the dangers of using one of the photocopiers - he went ahead anyway and ended up having to pull out tiny pieces of paper from various orifices of the machine.I expect he'll remember to pass on that tip to any future new teachers , as, like me, he learnt from his experience !
I also began to ponder on what to do in my week off that I had just been told about - as there won't be enough students in school in two weeks time to keep me in work that week. I'm ok with that , and have SO MANY things I could do !