What are the similarities between a pencil and a telephone?

I have been working on a small project to adapt some of the language games that I like to use with general English classes and make them more appropriate for business students.

I had a game which provided students with cards labelled with 'leisure activity', 'job', 'object', 'city', 'animal' and 'famous person'. I replaced these cards with 'office equipment', 'profession', 'city', 'global company' and I kept 'leisure activity' of course these can be changed to suit the topic or subject.

In the game, each student writes down a word relating to the subject on the back of their card. When this is done all of the cards are placed topic upwards (words down) on the table. (I added some of my own cards as there were not many students - teacher involvement may also increase the vocabulary output) Students then select 2 cards of the same topic and compare them.

This worked really well not only as a grammar exercise but also as a discussion starter. There is a lot of student involvement from the start and they can definitely come up with some interesting comparisons.

"There are only two reasons a man will hold open a door. A new woman and a new car"
Vlasta CAE

Observation 1

I could sum this up with one word - Stressful - but I will elaborate.

This observation was in two parts. A 30 minute lesson that was designed for my assessments which didn't take place and is needed for my PTLLS to be finalised. As it seemed pointless for my boss to observe for only 30 minutes and I had a 90 minute lesson anyway we decided it would be best if I expanded the lesson to make it into a full 90 minute session.

The topic was crime and punishments, the students were one of my favourite groups that are comprised of a couple of graphic designers, a salesman/personal trainer and a hippy repairman who smokes way to much pot! They are an excellent group who work hard and they are ridiculous.

The lesson got of to a bad start. The salesman was late, one was missing and the other two were nervous and consequently took much longer to do a warm up word description game than they normally would. Also midway through the first game one of them went out to answer the phone, which was awkward.

They completed their vocabulary sheets with relative ease and we moved on to the discussion topic which is of course when their ridiculous nature came out and they started to have a bit of fun. I however, was still really nervous and incapable of giving proper instructions without getting confused about what I was trying to say.

So after a discussion about whether the man who killed the old ladies dog because he was driving drunk should go to prison or just 'serve the old lady' we moved on to the grammar. Which in the general nevrousness in the room everyone got wrapped around their neck - including me. Hanging from the ceiling by the past perfect with you boss watching is not exactly a pleasant situation.

Anyway thanks to the graphic designer who never says much but has an exceptional grasp of grammar we all survived if a tad jaded and I instructed them - probably not clearly - that they were going to use their new words and think about their grammar and do a small court room role play. This is when my favourite students came back to themselves and invented some incredible elaborate fantasies about bangs on the head, clown noses and other complete nonsense. And their grammar was not horrible and they used some of their new words which I guess was the point.

Chinese Whispers

I was looking for a way to make indirect speech and reporting verbs interesting for my FCE class and I decided to experiment with 'Chinese Whispers', or in Czech 'secret postman'. I think the concept needs a little more work but after a few false starts they got the hang of the grammar and everyone had a bit of fun.

The point of the game was to use 'reporting verbs' such as INVITE, WARN, THREATEN etc. The students were each given two such words and asked to make a sentence in direct speech without using those words.
e.g
"Will you come to dinner with me?"
"I will kill you!"
after every student had made their sentences and I had checked them to make sure they were all on the right track we attempted to play.

Person one whispers to their neighbour - "I will kill you"
Person two then translated that into indirect speech and hopefully using the original word says to their neighbour "Katie threatened to kill me!"
Person three then continues with - "Katie threatened to kill George" and that is passed in some form around the room.
In theory.

Of course it took a few attempts and I think a full practice run is a must but in the end all of the students made sentences which made sense, 50% of the rounds ended with at least the correct reporting verb and many laughs were had along the way so all in all I think it was a success.

The Beginning

So after a long and complicated start whereby I completed all the theory for a PTLLS and a CTLLS course on-line and travelled to England to complete the practical assessments only to be told that I couldn't (yes after I had got there) I am now working on a DTLLS. Still on-line but in a way that the teaching practice can be observed by my own Mr Director. No travelling involved. All is good.

Well almost. Being forced to transfer from a City & Guilds course to and EDEXCEL course has its disadvantages. I have been given credit for the PTLLS but that still leaves me transforming the C&G CTLLS work into EDEXCEL DTLLS which is both challenging and confusing but I have submitted my first peice of work. Only a small amount of editing needed and I am working on the second assignment.

Now I need to keep working, keep teaching, and have a few lessons observed!