Wed Feb 17

We were back in our "old" classroom today. I think that although it may be confusing as to which classroom they're supposed to be in each day, it's actually interesting to be in different places and use the space given in different ways. The 206-A room is much smaller and slightly stuffier (which was good today as it was so cold outside), but the sts sit opposite each other, which gives them a chance to hear and see their classmates a lot more easily. I walk down the middle of the room and they're mostly on either side of me. The 205-B room is larger, lighter and airier, but it's also wider so the sts sit in long rows facing the front. This does change the dynamics somewhat as there's not so much a sense of being all together in that room. Then there's the lab, which is even wider and more spread out and hardly conducive to conversation at all.

Today the freewriting topic was "Describe what you think it would be like to be rich and famous". Many sts gave both positive and negative aspects, and some highlighted how being rich might be good, but being famous would not be so good.

We've begun Module 8 now and so we began with the reading "How to be a celebrity". I would like to find a different text for next time I teach this class as it is just a little bit too superficial for most of the sts. I gave the sts 7 minutes to read the text, which had 7 sections. This was perhaps too long and they would've only needed 6 minutes. I also need to think about the way I explain how to find the correct phrase to fit the one in exercise 5, as many of them still tend to locate the wrong phrase.

The rest of the class was basically focuses on gerunds and infinitives. I have two sets of handouts which I gave them and we went through them. Some of them need to have extra examples added as they're in the exercise afterwards but not mentioned in the list. This took basically the entire class and we didn't have time to do the song. I get the feeling it was a long class for them. Gerunds and infinitives are so difficult to teach, I feel I still could improve on how to get the point across, or use different activities or something. How do you get students to use "gerunds and infinitives" in their natural speech? I don't want to say "Make a sentence using two gerunds" which is utterly absurd. But I find it hard to give them opportunities to practice without forcing it.

PS. I learned the word for "to bid" today, it's "pujar".