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 !

To do or to be doing , that is the question !

A full class this morning in a rather narrow room - which makes it tricky to squeeze past and listen for mistakes or good bits during spoken pairwork. We were reviewing present simple and present continuous and when to use which. I put the first names of 6 of my friends and family members on the board and got them to ask these 3 questions for each:

Who is ........... ?

What do they do ?

What are they doing now ?


so the answers included THE PRESENT SIMPLE AND THE PRESENT CONTINUOUS:

He is my husband.

He is a driving instructor.

He is probably still sleeping right now as it is only 10am !

They then thought of 6 of their own friends or family and asked each other the 3 questions. This was a good opportunity for spoken work and practice of the tenses.

We also listened to a CD conversation of two people meeting each other again after some time and catching up with each other's news. It included lots of phrases like : So do I , Me too , Me neither. The class then prepared some questions to ask each other about various topics - home, daily routine, interests etc and practised asking these, paying particular attention to the tenses and responding to one another using those phrases.

We then prepared a written piece of work - an email written to an old friend they had just recently got into contact with again ( via Facebook ) giving their news and asking about their friend. This also gave practice of the tenses: What are you doing now ? I'm studying at Mayflower college etc. All the students worked carefully and diligently on this and I went round helping with grammar and spelling. When I got to student O's work, I found that rather than asking for news from and giving news to his old friend, he filled the whole email with insults about how the friend ( an ex-girlfriend ) had obviously changed since he last saw her, as the photo on Facebook shows her now "with a face falling down like rabbits ears" etc !

The afternoon's lesson was with a higher level class and we did describing objects in detail and then having conversations at the lost property office to find their lost belongings. They enjoyed this task and learnt and used quite a lot of new vocabulary. After the afternoon break I descibed a scene for them to draw, then after comparing the different pictures drawn, they listened to a description of a journey on the CD, and imagined the scene in their mind's eye. They enjoyed relaxing, closing their eyes and using their imaginations for this. They then wrote their own description of a short journey for others to listen to and imagine, and this worked really well as they produced some really nice descriptive passages with lots of adjectives and other vocabulary, and enjoyed listening to each other's and imagining themselves on the various journeys.

Still teaching !

It's been a while ! I am still teaching - now at Mayflower college in Plymouth, doing between 3 and 4 days a week. It is a private language school, so more EFL than ESOL , no asylum seekers or refugees any more ( sadly ), but lots of students who want to take the IELTS test and go on to do Masters Degrees here in the UK or just improve their general English, sometimes teenagers in the Summer School too. The college also trains air traffic controllers and pilots for their TEA tests .

I had two lessons today - the first , a 3 hour lesson, with an upper intermediate class of 7 students, which involved reviewing relative clauses. I wanted to brighten the grammar lesson up a bit , so did a boxes spelling team game at the beginning, reviewing vocabulary that they had covered in Monday's lesson , including extreme adjectives. They enjoyed this and it set a nice tone for the rest of the lesson. The text book we are using is New Cutting Edge and the topic for this Module is events and celebrations, so I then got them to think of festivals/ special days that take place in the UK, as many as they could, through the calendar year. This brought out some discussion about similarities in their own countries and cultures. ( They had talked about and described festivals in their own countries the day before ).

Once we got onto relative clauses, they had lots of questions regarding when to use the relative pronoun "that" and when to omit it, and where to put prepositions in relative clauses. I had printed off some helpful explanations and practice exercises for these from other sources, which were very useful. I think I would try to spread this over more lessons in the future though, as it may have been a bit too much to take in for the weaker students. I used a different coloured pen to highlight the relative clauses on the white board , and especially in non-defining relative clauses, to show that the sentence still made sense if the relative clause was removed. Most of the students seemed to have grasped the difference between non-defining and defining relative clauses by the end, but I have also asked the teacher who will take the class tomorrow to check that with them.

Break and lunch time were spent in the staff room helping to eat the copious amount of chocolate on offer today as one teacher, Jan celebrated a big birthday, and another, Katy, is leaving.

After lunch I had an intermediate class of 7 students ( from Saudi Arabia, Colombia, France, Turkey, and Kuwait ) and the topic was writing emails or letters to book hotel rooms. I began the lesson by sharing a funny experience I once had at a guest house in Norfolk - where the guest house turned out to be the house of an old couple, with no facilities and a huge St Bernard dog ! They then shared good or bad hotel experiences, which got them speaking a bit. I then used the set text book pages ( from Real Writing 2 ) which focussed on the order of an email and the formal structures and phrases/vocab needed for booking a room. Once these things were looked at, I gave them a couple of authentic adverts for guest houses in Plymouth and got them to write an email asking re availability of rooms and for other information. This gave me an opportunity to go round and check specific problems of grammar and spelling. I was also able to work individually for a few moments with the weakest student.

I then got them to practise a hotel dialogue in pairs ( written by me ) and then checked pronunciation and word stress as a whole class of the various vocab (eg: available, en suite, facilities etc ) They then wrote their own dialogue in pairs and then acted it out . In the future I would get them to do this in front of the class, so that the others can hear better, and also I would set the others a listening task whilst watching/listening - ie how many rooms, which dates , price etc. I worked with the weakest student , as there was an odd number, though I don't usually like to do this during pairwork, as I want to be able to listen to the others, but it was ok for a few moments, especially as they were presenting it to the class later , when I could make notes and comment on any problems then.

The lesson ended with a student from Kuwait giving me a jar of curry sauce. He had told me the day before that he wanted to show me a special Indian sauce, as he knows I like Indian food, I thought he was going to bring in a recipe ! I may try it for tea though ......

Final TP

My final TP was with an Entry 3 class of 8 learners. The aim of the lesson was to introduce the idea of charities and fundraising for citizenship, as they play a large part in British culture, and to practise the language of making plans together, such as "Let's...." "Shall we.. ", "What about .... " " We could.....", with a view to planning a fundraising event together.

I began the lesson by asking the learners to share with each other what they had learnt for homework - they had been asked to find out about one charity, the name and who they help. Most of the learners had made the effort to do some research - either by internet, or by popping in to a charity shop and picking up leaflets, so they spent some time communicating what they had learnt in pairs, with some questioning for more details happening too. This was a nice way to start the class , as it got them talking straight away, and also introducing themselves to each other a bit, as there were 5 new learners who had only been in part of the previous lesson.

After this I checked that they understood the concept of a charity and elicited the word "fundraising" and checked they understood that concept too. I also introduced the idea of sponsorship and a sponsor form ( I had one to show them ). One learner mentioned the word volunteer and also some benefits of volunteering, so I picked up on that, checked they understood the concept, by asking " Does a volunteer get paid ? " and also mentioned that it is Volunteer Week in Plymouth at the moment. (I was able to give them some information about the Plymouth Guild volunteering organisation later for those who were interested in finding out more ).I also introduced the aim of the lesson - to plan a fundraising event together, and made a link with previous lessons when we had made plans for a trip together as a class.

I then introduced some vocab for fundraising events , such as "Jumble sale " by getting them to do an activity where they had to match words with pictures in pairs, the phrases had been cut in two, so they had to match the correct words together too. This was more difficult for some than I had expected, but with a little help they managed to achieve it.I then gave them a gap-filling and matching handout with the same vocabulary on it, so they had the vocab in front of them, most of them completed this easily, one or two needed a bit of support.

I then used a Powerpoint presentation first of all showing a photo of me in a
Sportrelief race ( personalising it ! ) and then of the Race for Life taking place in Plymouth at the weekend,making it relevant and up to date. The Powerpoint then had pictures and a dialogue , using language for making plans for a fundraising event. I wanted to prompt possible sentences with the pictures appearing alone at first.This worked quite well,one or two students probably took part more than others, but all did make contributions and all were engaged. I think I could have been a bit tighter on asking individuals more, to make sure that all were on the right track and saying the phrases correctly.I reviewed this again with just the pictures.

I also introduced a bit of phonology, showing how sounds can be linked for example in " What about... ", and also checked individual things like the use of articles in sentences for a Polish learner, and intonation with another learner. I would like to have done more of that , but wanted to make sure there was enough time for the free practice role play later on.

One learner arrived late, part way through the Powerpoint presentation,having got the time of the lesson wrong. He was not very happy about that and was reluctant to take part for a while as a result, though I tried to involve him from that point.

I then reviewed the kind of phrases that can be used for making plans, such as "Shall we.." "Let's.." with the class , then explained that I wanted them to plan a fundraising event in groups, choosing a charity, and an event using those phrases and thinking about what else they might need to organise for their event. I gave them a role card as a prompt too.They seemed motivated and engaged, and took part in this well together. I monitored at this point and took notes of a few errors that were made.

I managed to talk with the latecomer at this point and tried to reassure him and persuade him to take part with a group, which he did in the end. I think he may have a problem with hearing, which I will investigate with him next lesson.

For the final 5 minutes of the lesson, I asked the groups to share with the class what kind of event they had arranged, for which charity and any other details, then we voted on which event we would prefer as a class, deciding on a coffee morning ! I then quickly wrote some of their errors onto the board and elicited corrections from them.The latecomer took part very well at this point and was able to correct some errors.

I think the aims were achieved, in that the groups managed to plan a fundraising event together and they had been introduced to the idea of charities and fundraising.The lesson incuded the four skills, and citizenship too. It was mostly a nice atmosphere in the class and they were motivated and engaged. I think I could have checked pronunciation more. I supported some learners if they needed extra help, and also had stronger learners working with weaker ones. I forgot to use the
MP3 players when they were discussing , and could have used that as a listening exercise later. I gave them a handout with the powerpoint dialogue on it later for them to practise at home, as well as a Reading text for homework about the Race for Life.

I've thought of a name for a new charity: Jackierelief !

Peer observation

The lesson began at 7pm , and I observed from 8pm -9pm. It was an Entry 1 group, with 6 learners present. The learners came from Poland and Thailand. The aim of the lesson was to practise the present continuous and to be able to use it to express what they like to do. Uschi used a communicative task-based approach within the context of leisure activities, with some language study as it came up during the lesson.

Uschi began by writing sentences on the board with 3 possible verb forms and eliciting from the class which was the appropriate form:

On Saturday I go/goes/am going shopping


Ulla wear/wears/is wearing shoes



Once she had checked that the class understood the difference in meaning between the present simple form and the present continuous, she gave them a handout of numbered pictures of leisure activities, with words/phrases at the bottom , they had to match the words and the pictures using the numbers on the page. The learners managed this well.

They were then asked to say what the people in the pictures were doing, using the present continuous. Uschi elicited the correct version from one or two learners and then concentrated on getting the other learners to use the correct verb formation as they continued giving her spoken answers. She then got them to practise it in pairs by giving each other a number and getting their partner to say the correct phrase. The class worked well together in pairs and Uschi monitored and checked their pronunciation and understanding.

If correction was needed or if the meaning needed to be made clear, Uschi personalized the answers to help the learners understand.

When it was time to do some writing, Uschi used an example on the whiteboard to show the class how the “e” is removed when adding “ing”, she then checked they had understood this by asking them to write other examples from the handout which followed the same rule. She also pointed out the doubling rule for words like swimming too, though the learners were unsure about why that happens. As learners completed the sentences, Uschi asked them to practise orally with their partners again.

Uschi then explained that we use the present continuous from ( or gerund here ) when talking about what we like doing, she gave some personal examples and elicited both the question form and answers to questions such as: Do you like cooking ? The learners were able to answer very well, using the forms : Yes, I do or : No, I don’t.

Once Uschi was sure that they had understood the question and answer form, she gave them a class survey or Find Someone Who activity - where they had to mingle and ask various people in the class about what they liked to do in order to complete the task. This worked very well and the learners were happy to mingle and work together on the task. It was also very good practice in asking for and spelling their names.

Uschi then reviewed this, asking them who they had found who liked certain activities. The learners responded well. Uschi then reviewed what had been learnt in the lesson and got the learners to complete their lesson record.

There had been a nice atmosphere in the class and the objectives and aim of the lesson had been achieved. Uschi knew the learners well and differentiated by outcome or task as she went along, this was also evidenced on the lesson plan. The learners were motivated and had learnt and practised how to form the present continuous and how and when to use it.