Wed Feb 25

Objectives for today -

- Reading comprehension: Extracting information from the text, working out vocabulary from the context

- Conceptualize gerunds and infinitives

The journal writing for today was about the question: "What do you think it would be like to be rich and famous?" I asked some students for their input after they finished. They had some thoughtful statements.

We went straight to p. 84 with the reading "How to be a celebrity". I had sts discuss in small groups the questions about famous people and the ways people become famous. We wrote these ideas on the board later. Then they read the text individually. No-one had heard of Charles Blondin, so I explained the story of the wheelbarrow and whether people believed he could do it or not. We also discussed different diseases with the names of the discoverer, and people who had created their own formula for success. Working through the phrases according to the context was a little difficult for them. We looked at the phrase "fond of", which came up again in the next class.

Then we went to p. 88. I skipped the song for obvious reasons, and also p. 86's road to fame story as it seems to be a bit redundant. Unfortunately the grammar section for gerunds and infinitives seems to be more confusing than helpful, so I created a worksheet for both gerunds and infinitives that I hope was more helpful for the sts. It gave them a list of commonly used verbs, some explanations and clear examples and a few exceptions; and then one or two exercises to practise. I'm a little worried though that I didn't give the sts much practice in making up their own sentences. I'm not sure exactly how to get sts to produce them themselves - only how to work through them in other, already-given sentences. Gerunds and infinitives seem to me to be so entrenched in the English language that it's difficult for me to work through how to isolate them and get the sts to consciously use them.

I did photocopy some Spiderman comic strips in order to get the sts to identify them in an authentic text; and I whited-out another strip for them to create their own dialogues there. But the grammar section took a long time; and I still wanted to give the sts opportunity to look at some novels I'd brought for them to read. So I left the comic strips for the next class.

Fri Feb 20

Objectives for today:

Language awareness: Revision of quantifiers

Reading comprehension - strategies the sts use for reading faster, making summaries, guessing meaning from context

The topic for today's journal writing was on the book they are reading for English (or going to read). If they are reading one - what's it about? Are you enjoying it? If you don't have one, what book would you like to read?

(In hindsight, I could have altered this a little, as most of them still don't have a book, and were a little at a loss as to what to write.)

At the end of the class I gave them some ideas about where to look for English novels, and what type to look for.

We did some work in p. 56 of the Workbook, in order to revise quantifiers. The activity was a little hard, particularly the second column, which says "this ice cream is full of flavour and should satisfy any of the chocolate lovers among our readers." It seemed a little strange, but nothing else fit.

I then went around the room and asked each person, "how fast can you read in Spanish?" most said that they considered themselves quite fast readers. But the next question, "how fast can you read in English?" made them admit that (except for Elvia), they were much slower readers in English. They discussed in groups what things they personally read in English, what strategies they use to read better, and what the difficulties are of reading in English. They reported back and I wrote their answers on the board. Some said they hardly read in English at all. Others said they read a lot while playing Play Station. Most said that their difficulty was in vocabulary and in understanding "lexical chunks". I showed them a sentence which, if translated directly to Spanish, makes no sense whatsoever, but that dividing the sentence up into lexical chunks, makes more sense.

Sts read p. 82, "improving your reading speed". Then they practiced reading a text on p. 139 in 60 seconds, following the advice of the tips, and writing down the main points of the text. Everyone was able to finish within 60 seconds and give an accurate summary of what the text was about. We then turned back to p. 78. I called on specific people to participate as I felt I wasn't getting enough participation out of certain sts. The sts read the article, section by section, having one minute to read each one, and summarize the main points. They were all able to read the text in the given time. They then worked with vocabulary and chose the correct meaning from the context. Other vocab not mentioned in the exercise that they had trouble with was stall, port wine, wasabi.

By the end of this activity many sts commented that they were reading faster, and were proud of that.

We still haven't managed to do awkward social situations, although this has been on the lesson plan for about three classes now!

I gave the sts information about the blog (erroneously called 612cele) and asked them to write and share in it, use it as a class diary, and give feedback on the classes given. It's an opportunity for them to not only practice writing, but also for me to improve my teaching. The sts present gave me their emails for me to invite them. They seemed enthusiastic about the idea of a blog.