Category: Teaching Ideas

Here’s today’s boardwork in two pictures.

Can you guess what happened in class?

It was raining this morning as I went to school and it was miserable.

I commented on the weather as I entered the classroom, and the students agreed in unison, expressing their dislike for the wet weather. One student started voicing his worries about the weather for the rest of the week, saying that he was booked to do a Jack the Ripper walk in a couple of days. I took out my iPhone and checked my London Met Office app while eliciting the lexis ‘weather forecast’, and to his disappointment, it stated that there would be heavy rain showers every day till Saturday, with a tiny reprieve of a light rain shower on Thursday (shouldn’t we all be thankful for that!).

At this point, I asked students to move their chairs in the usual horseshoe, joking that I felt like they were judges on Xfactor judging me if they all sat in a straight line. A student asked what that was, and I said it was a singing competition on TV. Another student asked it that was like ‘The Voice’, a new TV show I know very little about, and I threw the question to the rest of the class. Another student asked if it was like ‘American Idol’. In the meantime, the Japanese students seemed rather clueless about all these TV programmes, and so I got the Brazilians to explain the concept of audience participation to their fellow classmates. While I fed in lexis such as ‘the one with the least votes’, ‘to get kicked out of the show’ and ‘the ratings are high’, the students told each other about the talent shows that also existed in their countries.

A Korean student then said that they get the British programmes XFactor and Britain’s Got Talent in Korea, and a lot of young people download the programmes because everyone talks about them and the newspapers talk about them too. I fed in the phrasal verb ‘to hype something up’, and highlighted that ‘hype’ could also be used as a noun. Here’s the example scenario I gave to clarify:

When the film Titanic first came out, everyone was talking about it and the media kept covering it.

There was a lot of hype about the film.

Some people watched the film and felt disappointed.

They felt that the film was less than what everyone had said.

They felt that the film did not live up to the hype.

I then asked students for other films that the media really hyped up and did not live up to the hype.

We ended up with ‘Inception’ and ‘Sex and the City’ (both part 1 and 2, I’m afraid).

I then elicited other object nouns they felt would collocate with the phrasal verb ‘live up to’, and they cleverly volunteered ‘expectation’.

I then prompted them further with this example:

I went to this language school because everyone said it was really good.

It had a good name.

But when I was there, I was disappointed.

I did not think the school was as good as its name.

I think the school did not live up to its r_______________.

After some more prompting, a student shouted out ‘reputation’, giving us a total of three object nouns that collocate with ‘live up to’.

I then asked students whether they were more likely to use ‘live up to’ with in a negative or positive sentence and we agreed that we are more likely to comment on something if it did not live up to our expectations.

Someone mentioned the 3D version of Titanic at this point, and I said that I had heard it was really good and worth watching. A student looked at me puzzled and said that he had heard quite the opposite about the 3D release, saying that there was not much 3D effect in it, except the moment when the ship crashed into the iceberg and the ice comes shattering into the audience. Another student grimaced at the mentioned of Titanic and didn’t seem impressed.

I was reminded at this point of a bar I was in recently that was commemorating the 100^th Anniversary of the Titanic sinking by having their guests all turn up in 1920s outfits, and students seemed amused by that. I tried to elicit ‘fancy dress party’ and got ‘costume party’ instead.

Funnily enough, when I proceeded to write ‘fancy dress party’ on the board, a student asked, ‘But “fancy” also means expensive, right?’ The rest nodded.

Rather than brushing it aside by saying ‘There are many meanings of “fancy” but we are only dealing with one now,’ I decided to address the students’ confusion.

I first clarified that ‘fancy dress party’ was a fixed expression and cautioned students not to try and dissect the meaning of ‘fancy’ in the above phrase.

I said, ‘If I go to a fancy restaurant, what kind of restaurant is it?’

The students said, ‘Expensive?’, ‘Elegant?’

I said, ‘Yes. What’s a word we use for “upper class”?’

A student contributed ‘posh’.

I elicited, ‘What part of speech is “fancy” here?’

Students volunteered, ‘Adjective’.

I drew a mindmap on the white board with ‘fancy’ in the middle circle.

I then asked, ‘Can “fancy” be a verb?’ and the students looked at me, puzzled.

‘What if I said to you, “Do you fancy a pizza?” What am I asking you?’

(I figured it was a common enough question and since the students didn’t know it, it was time they did.)

After hazarding a few wrong guesses, I decided to put them out of their misery.

Equating it to ‘Would you like a pizza?’, the students then said, ‘Oh, it’s the same as “Do you want a pizza?”

Pushing this mid-int class further, I said, ‘It’s the same as “Do you feel like a pizza?”’

The students laughed. I realized the double meaning embedded in that statement.

So I explained, ‘Do you think I am asking you if you have the same feelings as a pizza?’

The students continued laughing as they said, ‘no’.

I then said, ‘Is it the same as “Are you in the mood for a pizza?”’

The students agreed.

I asked, ‘Does this all mean “Do you want to have a pizza now?”’

And the students got it.

A quick controlled practice was called for, so I asked, ‘How do you ask your friend if she wants to go out?’

The students replied, ‘Do you fancy going out?’ and ‘Do you feel like going out?’

I said, ‘The weather is awful. You want to say no. How do you say it?’

The students replied, ‘I don’t fancy going out,’ and ‘I don’t feel like going out.’

I decided to leave more controlled practice for tomorrow and moved on to another meaning of ‘fancy’.

I included ‘I really fancy Angelina Jolie’ on the mindmap and asked students to deduce what it meant. After a few goes, they finally settled on ‘like’ and I added that  I not only ‘like’ her but would like to maybe kiss her or more… (I was appealing to overwhelming majority of men in the class here and was definitely not alluding to my sexuality in any way!)

We were now ready to go back to the topic that we had left to explore ‘fancy’ as students were clearly still interested in it.

I asked students, ‘What reality TV shows or talent shows are there in your country?’ and ‘What do you think of them?’

In groups of 3 or 4, students shared with each other, explaining the concepts of programmes like Big Brother, Survivor, and the Apprentice as they went along.

A Japanese student said that reality shows were not as popular in Japan, despite the one weird example of one where girls were put into a house and competed to see who could cry the most by collecting their tears in test tubes (I am not lying! Honestly!)

So I prompted her to talk about TV shows that were popular, or shows that colleagues would talk about at work. The conversation soon led on to popular soap operas and quiz shows. We talked about the origin of the expression ‘soap opera’ (They used to be day-time programmes targeting housewives and therefore featured many soap ads), before taking our 15-minute break.

When we came back, I told my two Korean students about the ad I had seen of a Korean cultural festival on the door near reception. I asked if they were going and the other students were curious as to what might be featured in such a festival. The two Koreans speculated that there might be some karaoke or some Korean food and drink, but I noticed that some of the students looking quite perplexed and so I asked, ‘Have you ever tried Korean food?’

Only the Japanese students replied in the positive.

I realized at this point that many of my students hardly knew much about their fellow classmate’s countries or cultures.

So I wrote on the board – Brazil, Japan, Korea, Iran, and said, ‘These are the four countries in our class. Apart from your own, write a sentence about something you know about each country. You have 3 minutes.’

As I monitored, my suspicions were confirmed. The students didn’t know much beyond the fact that Japan was famous for sushi and was where samurais originated, that Brazil had carnivals and Iran had oil.

After they had written their sentences, I put them in groups with students from countries other than their own, and they shared the sentences they had written.

Students were instantly keen to inform their classmates about their countries and tell them more than the superficial sentences that had been written.

As the levels of conversation and the decibels in that class increased, I heard the quietest student in that class passionately telling his fellow classmates about how sad he was about the missile that was launched by North Korea last week, and then explaining the reason for the North and South Korea divide. This student arrived in London not too long ago and was clearly having teething problems with dealing with a communicative approach to language learning for the past week. Like many students from the Far East, he tended to think carefully before forming a sentence, and preferred keep quiet unless he had something important to say. He now clearly did…

Using complex sentences and impressive lexical items like ‘Capitalism was led by the USA and Socialism was led by USSR’, he certainly surprised a few of his classmates with his level of English. I couldn’t stop smiling. This was the trigger I had been waiting for.

Open class feedback about the different countries brought the topic on to football, and we spoke about the rivalry between neighbouring countries. I told students about how the Scottish wore T-shirts that said ‘ABE’ (Anyone But England) in jest when England would play in the World Cup, and how the Irish would rather support Aliens if they played England. A student at this point asked, ‘Sorry, but the Irish people don’t speak English, right? They have their own language?’

This brought us on to a whole new discussion. I explained the attempts of the UK government to keep Welsh and Gaelic (Scottish and Irish) in the education system with varying degrees of success, and how many of the Highlanders, after the Highland clearances, no longer see Scottish Gaelic as their language, while although the Irish continue to see Irish Gaelic as their language, do not speak it as much as the Welsh speak Welsh. (see here for my post of Gaelic)

Seeing the interest the topic has generated, I asked the students to prepare something about their country as homework so as to share with the others the next day. Finally, a task. The task I have been waiting to set.

In the last 30 minutes of the lesson, I had students bring out the photos of adverts that they had previously taken on their mobile phones as homework, and had one in each pair describing it to their partners while their partners drew the advert on a mini-whiteboard.

Students then discussed the following questions:

What is the advertisement about?

Where did you see it?

Who is it targeting?

Why did you choose it?

In open class feedback, the partners showed the class their drawing and reported what they had been told about the ad while the mobile phones were passed around so that students could compare the original photos to the drawings and compliment fellow students on how well they have done.

With the huge amount of lexis to be revised, the task to be worked on, and only half the class having shared their photos of adverts, it certainly looks like tomorrow’s lesson has already been cut out for me.

Or has it?

With a Dogme class, you just never know…