The Teach-Off – Coursebk Day 6

This is Varinder Unlu’s account of her 6th Day using the coursebook.

Click here if you need a refresher on what’s happened till now.

Meanwhile, let me hand you over to Varinder…

30th April 2012

 

Today’s lesson objectives:

To recap use of “wish”

To differentiate between formal and informal language

Making formal phone calls

To improve listening and pronunciation

Pages 86 and 87 from Global Intermediate

We spent about the first ten minutes of the lesson talking about what the students had done over the weekend. The following language emerged: festival, farewell party, other than, raining cats and dogs, postcards.

I then went through what we were going to be doing in today’s lesson.

1.     I gave students an activity taken from resource sections at the back of  English File Intermediate on wishes.  There are a 12 sentences with the same number of blank circles below them.  Students (A and B) have to choose 7 of the sentences they want to talk about and write something in the correlating circle below.  All sentences are about wishes.  I gave students five minutes to write down their answers before working with a partner to ask them about what and why they have answered the way they did.
2.    Once students had completed their circles I matched up student A and B together (they had different sentences) and students asked their partner about their answers.  This activity seemed to go down very well with the learners and they asked for clarification on language as I went round and monitored.  I allowed the activity go on as the students were clearly enjoying what they were doing and using a lot of excellent language to speak to each other about their wishes. 
3.     I conducted some feedback after the activity not by going through each wish of each student but asking students to tell me one interesting wish they had found out about their partner. Language emerging from this activity: on/to the moon, patience, mint, earth and of course the target structure with wish: I wish I didn’t have to swim, I wish I could go swimming, I wish I had more patience are just a few examples of the kind of things the learners were expressing.  I corrected where necessary.
4.      We then moved onto the first activity in the book on page 86.  There are two pictures: on of a call centre and another in a doctor’s surgery.  Students worked in pairs to discuss where they would like to work if they had a choice.  Most of the class preferred picture B (Doctor’s surgery).  One pair of students said neither because both looked boring.
5.      We then move onto exercise 2 and again students worked in pairs to discuss the questions about mobile phones.  The conversation centred round mobile phones and how much we use them.  Two of the students work for mobile phone providers in Brazil and so had quite a lot to say about this.  We talked a little about what it life was like before mobile phones and that many people in the class probably didn’t know a life without them. Language emerging from this: stock exchange, competitors, behind the scenes, backstage, landline, handsets, emergencies, in the past.
6.      I now asked the students to look at the sentences in the Listening activity and gave them some time to have a look at them.  I then explained that they would be listening to three conversations and one of them doesn’t match the pictures at the top of the page.  I played the listening and students checked their answers in pairs before I asked for class feedback.  They got the right answer but there were a few comments about the listening and that they couldn’t hear some of the things that were being said.  The students found the third listening funny as they had all been in that situation and we discussed how they felt about this kind of phone call.  Language emerging from this part: automated response
7.      Next the students had to say whether the sentences were true or false.  I played the listening again and students checked in pairs before class feedback.
8.      The final activity before the break was the Language focus activity where students had to say if the sentence was said by the caller or the person who answered the call.  They did this in pairs before we had feedback for the answers.
9.      After the break we focused back on the sentences in the Language focus activity and looked at stress and intonation in the sentence.  I played the listening again and students had to decide which one sounded the most polite and which the most formal. 
10.     I then gave students a hand out with formal – informal language for making phone calls (idea taken from our Executive centre’s handbook).  It also had the NATO phonetic alphabet (ie a for alpha, b for bravo etc).  I thought the students might find this useful especially if they ever had to spell things out over the telephone – I know I always have to spell my name to people when speaking on the phone because it’s not Susan!!
11.    The students were then put in pairs and I gave them their role-paly instructions on pieces of card (taken from page 86 of Global).  I asked the students to work together with one person playing the receptionist and the other the patient.  I did the dental surgery role play only because I thought it would have been too much for the students to do both suggested of in the book.  I may come back to the second one later in the week to reconsolidate the language of phone calls.  I monitored and helped during this stage.
12.    During the feedback stage students listened to each pair and commented on how polite and formal they sounded.  We also focused on some error correction during this part.
13.    We then looked at formal and informal language in social English and what is acceptable or not when meeting and speaking to someone they have met for the first time.  Language emerging from this stage:  small talk, text speak, how do you do, can I introduce you to…/I’d like you to meet.., pleased to meet you.
14.    Students were interested in small talk and I explained what this was and the difference between text speak and small talk.  We went through a few examples of text speak: c u l8tr, btw, omg, lol etc which amused them.
15.    I gave the students the reading on page 87 for homework.

 

An interesting lesson which can be adapted and extended.