Fri Feb 27

Objectives for today:

- Identify gerunds and infinitives in a written text

- Create a dialogue in a written text, including gerunds and infinitives

- Identify basic movie conventions, and begin watching Stardust (without subtitles)

Although the journal writing for today was to listen to African music and write their thoughts as they listened, it took a while to set up the Play Station equipment in order to watch the DVD, so I skipped the writing task today.

We went straight to looking at the homework (final exercise on infinitives), and then in groups of three I gave out one page each of the comic strip to each group. They had to read the strips and identify the gerunds and infinitives in them. It seemed like simple and hopefully fun exercise, and in the end they identified a good number of the grammar points; but they got more stuck on the unknown vocabulary of the strips, which I hadn't counted on -  words like preposterous, web-slinging wacko, whining, in cahoots, criminal underbelly, luring - and which distracted them. So by the time they finished the exercise (which took longer than expected) I wasn't prepared to get them to do the "invent the dialogue" exercise as well.

Unfortunately knowing that you're going to watch a DVD at some point in the class (please, please, no more exercises, we want to watch the movie!!!) is a distraction. I had planned to show at least 40 minutes of the movie in order to ensure that we would finish watching it in one more session. So as we went through some common movie conventions, I could see the sts' minds ticking away and my own watch-hands moving forward, the need becoming greater and greater.

So we watched the movie. I stopped it a few times. Mental note: putting the DVD through the VCR and into the TV brings down the volume quite notably. Also, not putting on subtitles for the first part ensures that your sts don't understand what is going on quite as much because they're not used to the accents and are still trying to establish characters and plot.

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.

Mon Feb 23

Objectives:

Intercultural awareness - making suggestions and responding to polite forms of handling awkward social situations

Speaking - asking "yes/no" questions to guess someone's identity, introduction to the topic

The journal writing topic today was to write about an awkward social situation that they had once had. I think I didn't give a good enough example for them, but still when a number of them shared their situation, it was clear they had understood what I had expected of them. I think in the future a good example would be a mobile phone going off at the wrong possible moment, or asking for the wrong dish in an expensive restaurant.

I then reiterated the need to find a book for the English class (gave them the opportunity to borrow some of mine) and we talked a little more about the website.

Finally we went to p. 81 and did the exercise on awkward social situations, discussing each one and hearing suggestions (both voluntarily and asked for) for what Bella should say. We had a good discussion about the difference between Mexican ways of answering and British ways. Quite a few sts said they were much more upfront and honest with their answers, rather than beating around the bush or saying a "white lie", while others said they preferred to look for a peaceful way out which may not necessarily be truthful. The sts then acted out their own situations, including a few I suggested for them - a bad haircut, forgetting someone's birthday, or discovering that your friend really supported George W. Bush! Some of these situations were acted out in front of the class.

We then played a game where each person had to think of a famous person, alive or dead, and their partner had to guess who it was, asking only questions which could be answered with "yes" or "no". Before beginning, I elicited the correct forms of questions of this type, such as "Does he" or "Is she" or "Was he" or "has she been". This worked quite well and only a very few couldn't guess the person.

Then I changed the rules and gave each person a famous person, whose name they had to hold to their forehead so that everyone could see the name except for them. They had to ask questions about themselves, going around the room. Here they had to use "Am I" or "Do I" or "Was I". Again, this worked well and provoked people's curiosity. Some were easier than others but there were a lot of laughs, and the language was used well.

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.

Wed Feb 18 - LAB

Objectives for today:

Language awareness - classification of vocabulary (types of food), conceptualization of quantifiers

Listening comprehension - making inferences based on the title and beginning of song, listening for specific information

Being in the lab but not being able to use the electronic blackboard, I had to seat everyone on one side of the lab, closest to the whiteboard. Three students didn't fit so they sat on the closest seats on the other side. The lab doesn't work well for speaking except possibly in pairs or max. 3 people.

The topic for journal writing was to write a simple recipe for one of their favourite types of food. This took a little longer than expected. A number need a lot of vocabulary to do with cooking. No-one wanted to share their recipe, but they did tell me which type of food they were writing a recipe for. Some were not very simple!

Feeling a little unorganized today - leaving too many things to the last minute, which made me feel flustered. I brought in a lot of plastic food for the sts to classify into countable and uncountable nouns. The food stayed down the front on the table and I picked each one up and they said where it should go - with "a few, too many, a number of" or "very little, too much, a great deal of". This was very teacher-centred and lacked interaction from more people. Often the same people answered. In hindsight, it would have been better to break the class into groups and get them to categorize a number of food items, then report back to the whole class. My boardwork was also a little lopsided.

We turned to p. 80 and read the "food facts" together. The sts made guesses as to where the quantifiers should go in the text. They then listened for the correct information. They categorized the quantifiers on the board into "countable", "uncountable" and "both". We went through the analysis and read the language summary on p. 151. I emphasised the difference between "too much" and "demasiado", which in Spanish is also used to refer to something great - "demasiado bueno". One st asked about the phrase "too good to be true".

They then made twelve sentences out of the the list provided, eg. I don't eat much chocolate and then discussed them with a partner. Some made mistakes with the quantifiers, but were corrected during monitoring.

We didn't do the next activity "The lazy cook's guide" but went straight to the song in order to break up the grammar, which seemed to have gone on for too long, especially for a lab.

The song was "How to make gravy". The sts made inferences based on the title, some having given the meaning of "gravy". We looked at the first line and they made guesses about who the song was about, what it was; the second line established what time of year it was; and the third line established from where the letter was being written.

The sts listened to the song and filled in the gaps of the words. Some vocabulary we worked on later was roast, Queensland, dollop, cologne, stab me in the back, tang, my mind it plays up.I had to give them most of the vocabulary as it was quite Australia-specific. We listened to it again for them to confirm the word gaps and to enjoy it.

Mon Feb 16

Objectives for today:

Language awareness - conceptualizing defining and non-defining relative clauses

For journal writing, sts wrote describing their favourite place.

We then went to p. 76 and discussed the special days listed there (Children's Day, Mother's Day and Day of the Dead). I also gave them information, on their request, about these days in Australia. They attempted to complete the three texts using the relative clauses. The sts got the majority of the clauses correct. We took time to look at the analysis and I wrote on the board the various types of nouns which go before a relative clause (people, places, things, times and dates). The sts identified which relative pronouns refer to each one.

We also read through the language summaries. I didn't find this information so helpful for the sts, in fact it seems to confuse them more. In the future I'll try to find better reference information.

Sts then practiced with relative clauses, first just filling in relative pronouns, then discussing in pairs answers to questions such as "the name of a country you'd really like to visit". They did well discussing these and using the relative clauses correctly.

Finally we played a game. I gave each st a card with some information on it - the name of a famous person, place or film, or information about each one. They had to find the person with the card that matched the information, then together create sentences with the information using relative clauses. eg. "'The Dark Knight', which stars Christian Bale, is a 2008 movie which is set in Gotham City." The game was very successful and all sts participated to create effective sentences. Many of them wrote down the sentences they had made. This also was interesting as they learned about the people, places and movies.

Fri Feb 13

Objectives for today:

Listening comprehension - extracting the main information, recognition

Speaking - interviewing and describing an event

Listening comprehension - listening for main information, inferring attitudes

Today I remembered to bring music for the journal writing, which made things feel a little more relaxed. Their topic for today was "What will you do tomorrow for Valentine's Day / the Day of Love and Friendship / Saturday?" (It depended on whether they celebrate Valentine's Day or not!)

We went straight to p. 74 and they began the initial discussion with a partner a memorable event that they had both been to. They then listened to four people speaking about a memorable event. We listened to them one at a time and discussed the questions as we went, which basically looked for the main information from the texts. They then identified which phrases came from which listening text. I put special emphasis on the way "just" was used and also the use of "absolutely" in a number of sentences.

On p. 75 the sts then began the speaking task. We worked through the useful language. They worked with a different partner this time, and interviewed each other on a memorable event from their lives. Some of them later shared their partner's experience, and there were some very interesting ones - a concert in Italy, a carnival in Veracruz, and even working with Habitat for Humanity in Tabasco. This impressed me. The sts did well interviewing and using the language presented.

We had to skip "Awkward Social Situations" as there was not time to do both that and also listen to the song. So then we listened to the song "Knockbacks in Halifax", explaining the vocabulary knockbacks, Halifax, Northern Lights, Sydney, Geelong, bluenose, bitter. One of the students explained the Northern Lights. I got the students just to listen to the song with the words, and then they discussed what was going on in the song, how the singer felt about being in a disco in Halifax, and what happened between him and the girl. They enjoyed the song.