English Language Trainers Wanted: Leipzig November 3 through Nov 28

[Scott Graham]

Hi Shameem,
Yes it seems quite a lot, but I think the variety was important to keep them motivated. What I like to do is do short times on each subject then at some point go over them again or I find classes like this can switch off. I'm sure we can come to a mutually beneficial system if we put our heads together. They seemed to grasp most points though, like I mentioned Kathrin may need some extra help though but I was very impresses with all especially Tina and Katrin. They all seem to be enjoying themselves a bit more now, I tried to add as much humour to the class as possible!
Scott
_________________
By learning you will teach; by teaching you will learn.

[Shameem]

Hi again,

sorry, misunderstanding; I didn't mean the work you did with the group was so much (I think it's very good). I meant you wrote a lot (information about classes), but I appreciate this - thanks.

Hmm... mybe my breaks are too long yours are much shorter than mine!

Ok, let me know when you have time.

Cheers,
Shameem

[Shameem]

Hi Scott (again),

already told you a bit on the phone already, but I can tell you we also did:

Personal Pronouns
Materials (for clothes)
colours
Prepositions of place
(We did a room plan and Ss described where things were)
Ss also asked each other and told me what they were wearing
We reviewed the PS and Pres.Cont + Past.Cont + intro of Fut.Cont.
We did about weather/seasons
We did 'going to' and 'will be' and 'will'

H/W: Ss have to write a postcard to their best friend and describe stuff like; the weather, where they're going to and what they'll be doing,etc...

Viel spaß!

Shameem

[Scott Graham]

Hello Shameem,

Today I began by going through 'Useful classroom language', including "Open your books", "Please copy this" and of course "Your homework will be".

I then took the students through Question words....

-What
-Where
-When
-Who
-How
-Why
Which

I explained their uses, and we covered examples of questions and answers.
I then asked them to split into pairs and create a dialogue of questions and answers using each question word, which they then read to the class.

In the last session there was a lot of tired faces looking at me, so to try and help motivate them and to do something they enjoy and generally participate well in. We did some brain-storming on the topic 'Media'. So the ss came up with words and phrases to do with books, radio, television, movies and the internet.

Have fun tomorrow, the ss know they should have the homework from Friday to show you tomorrow.
_________________
By learning you will teach; by teaching you will learn.

[Shameem]

Hi Scott,

today we matched nouns with verbs and phrases such as: have (an accident), get (top marks), win (a race), feel (sick), etc.

I reviewed their understanding of question words:

when? Six
where? 1991
what? Paris
who? because I love him
why? John
which? some roses
how? €25
how much? the red ones
how many? by plane

Ss had to match a question word with an answer and then guess what type of story this could be from, (which they did). For the homework, due tomorrow, they have to write a very short story (just a few lines), using the answers above, e.g:

In 1991 Mary went to Paris by plane with John. He bought her six red roses because he loved her. The roses cost €25.

They have enough lexis/grammar to do this and we looked at some examples.

After some coaxing, 2 Ss read out a sentence from the h/w you set on Fri.

We did work on adverbs of frequency and adverbs of manner. Ss formed sentences with these in + - ?

I elicited lexis for giving directions: along, straight ahead, left, right, over, under, when you come to... we also looked at different ways to ask/give directions.
Ss had to give me directions from the Hauptbahnhof to the Nikolai Church.

Later, they had to decide which of these sports are the most dangerous, using scores 1-6 (1 being the most):

motor racing, golf, football, windsurfing, sky-diving, skiing

First they discussed in discusses this in groups (I monitored/micro-taught) after eliciting and introducing relevant lexis. We then had a class vote and Ss gave thir reasons in full sentences. This lead to the introduction and practice of the first and second conditionals, which most Ss grasped well. Petra and Annett may need further clarification, but Petra and Kirsten did very well on this.

We had a short discussion about marriage (if, when, why, why not...) and how these views may have been different in their parents generation.

I couldn't get the OHP to work and found the organisation poor at this site. Also, I was not informed by anyone (other than by the Ss today), that we're meant to be focusing on 'logisitics'. I was not told where to get the keys, nobody had and idea where I could find the register, etc...

Anyways, I felt we had a productive day and Ss participation, though lethargic (in all honesty), has improved. Keeping them motivated is a challenge, but it can be done! I've found anecdotes and visuals (esp from magazine advertisments), arouse the most interest.

Melanie (as previously mentioned), is at a much higher level than the rest of the group. If other Ss are to really learn anything, intervention from the stronger ones needs to be controlled. Tina and Katrin did very well today! Annett on the other hand, is very reluctant to interact with other Ss (despite having explained the relevance of this, she rarely enters into discussion with the others - I have to coax her). What do xou think?


I left the CD player and register in the classroom for you.
Viel Spaß am morgen!

Shameem

[Scott Graham]

Hi Shameem,
We had good couple days, firstly to answer question about Logistics. As you can see at the beginning of this thread on the forum, Torsten mentioned the course has is to help the students with finding a job, oral skills and office correspondence. I spoke with the ss and explained this and we agreed its what they expected. I agree with what you say about Annett, but I tend to send someone to work with her.

Thursday.
I began the lesson on Thursday by reviewing the ss homework you set on wednesday, they all did very well with it.
I then spent most of the morning reviewing the work we have done over the last 2 weeks and refreshing where needed.

We then did some brainstorming in 'process of getting a job', which we talked about:

-where we find job vacancies (newspapers, internet etc)
-applying for a job
-Cv's
-covering letters
-interviews

I took them through writing a cv, firstly I took them through the essentials of writing an effective cv,and stressed how it should be no longer than 2 A4 sheets and how important the introduction is, because research shows you have 5-10 seconds to impress. Then i explained important information that is needed in a cv and to only highlight relevant information, then we talked about the format of a good cv.

To end the day we spoke about the ss ambitions and ideal jobs.

For there homework I asked them to start on a cv of their own.

Friday

We began with looking at the ss homework, then we expanded on this. I gave the ss a cv template and got them to write one using this and again they all did quite well.

We then went into 'Telephone conversation', I took them through the essentials of:

-Answering the phone
-Taking a message

We firstly talked about important things like always being polite, clarity, how to take a message and what information you need and how to deal with native speakers speaking too fast.

I gave ss a worksheet which had a Telephone conversation dialogue and a typical message form.

Petra and I sat back to back and read the dialogue while the other ss filles in the relevant information into the message table. I then asked the ss to work in pairs and design their own dialogues, which they each took it in turns to read out to rest of ss. Who again used the information to fill in message table. After a few rounds of roleplay they all seemed to get the hang of this.

Again towards the end of the day, I saw every ss energy level drop so we used the last hour just to talk about random things, ie this weeks news, London, music and English television. All the ss participated quite well.

Have fun on Monday.

Scott
_________________
By learning you will teach; by teaching you will learn.

[Shameem]

Hi Scott,

in today's lesson we did the following:

elicited lexis for giving directions, e.g: walk along, across, take a/turn right or left, pass, straight on/ahead, etc.

Ss asked each other and gave directions with more fluency than our first attempt.

Lexis for logistics was elicited and introduced which lead to further brainstorming for things such as: customs control, customs duty, imports and exports, freight, cargo, types of transport for such purposes, storage and containers, taxes, etc. I explained the meaning of H.M. (such as in H.M. Revenue & Customs).

We looked at 'legal requirements', safety and offences (counterfeit goods, Class A & B controlled drugs, etc).

Ss listened to CD's and did some gap-fill exercises for listening and understanding. They listened to different voices and speeds answering questions and giving their opinions. We did work on politeness on the telephone and at work. Ss did some further listening exercises from 'Business Basics', in which they listened to messages, corrected errors and anwered questions about the various telephone messages.

I explained some differences between British and American English. We did some work on the Passive Voice, and also on telling the time, including things like 'around 9ish (c.a.), noon, midday, midnight, past and to the hour, and asking for the time.
We looked at some roles in logistics.

I gave Ss a 'mulitple choice' politeness quizz for the homework. We did the first 2 questions together. Ss need to decide which is the most polite, (a),(b) or (c), which
they can compare and discuss in the next lesson.

I'd say today's lesson went very well.

Viel spaß am morgen!

Shameem

[Torsten]

Good morning Shameen and Scott,

Thank you so much for doing such an excellent job with the WBS project -- it's obvious that the class has been enjoying working with you and they have made great progress. I remember when I was learning English at school back in the late 70ies / early 80ies we couldn't even dream of being taught by a native speaker let alone by two. What you are doing is to bring a good piece of the UK into a classroom in Leipzig and that's just exciting.

Shameem, at some point you mentioned that you did an exercise with the students where they had to rate different kinds of sport according to their 'risk or danger level'. Now, since Scott is into extreme sports I was thinking maybe we could create a word list that contains vocabulary items covering all kinds of new sports such 'powerrising', 'kite surfing' (not that new any longer ), 'sky diving' etc. The interesting thing about this exercise is that the vast majority if not all the terms will be the same in English and German since there is no German translation for 'snowboarding', 'inline skating, 'para gliding' etc.

Once we have the list, we can then ask the students which of those sports they know and which are being practised in our area and other countries and why. The current WBS course could serve as a start for this mini project which we then continue with other groups. At any rate I think it would be great to also try and create something tangible with the students -- something they can 'take away' once the course is finished. Scott, I know you have started CV work with the students which is very good because it shows them why and how they should use their English language skills.

Please let me know what you think.
Best regards,
Torsten
PS: Congratulations on your win yesterday in Berlin .
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Shameem]

Hi Torsten,

thank you very much for the positive feedback. Yes they all had some interesting ideas as to which of the listed sporting activities they considered to be more dangerous than others and why. Actually, some of them were quite funny! I'm always up for creating word lists How about adding this one to the list? http://www.billfryer.com/dsc/
and then there's the Oxford Dangerous Sports Club!

Today the group did very well; I'm satisfied with their progress.

Warmest regards,

Shameem

PS: Thanx for your congratulations - whehey!!

[Shameem]

Hi Scott,

I started off today by checking understanding for countable/uncountable nouns with much/many. I also checked for Ss understanding of the 2nd Conditional, which I know you did on Tuesday. We then did some exercises on the 1st Conditional with 'if'

I introduced the Passive Form by writing a model sentence: They had their house painted. I clarified any lexical items and we went on to produce further examples which Ss also formed in negative and question forms. I mixed up various sentences in all forms covered so far, and asked them the forms. I was very happy with the response to this random exercise!

We then went on to phoning and emailing, expanding on what they've learned so far.
We did work on the following:

politeness, formal/informal
connecting to another department/person
explaining that the line is busy and trying to connect/put through
asking if caller wishes to hold or try again later
taking messages
dealing with complaints

We did work on lexis for orders:

How to take orders
The usual... name, billing address, delivery address, VAT, p&p, sub-total, discount,total and so on...
Methods of payment (all major credit cards, direct bank transfer,COD,cheque and so on)
Delivery
Insurance

deadlines (they liked this word)

We also looked at some more lexical items to do with shipping/freight, warehouse, fork-lift truck, packaging, labelling (fragile, handle with care, this way up, special instructions...)

They looked weary towards the end of the afternoon as we'd covered quite a bit. Ss were engaged I found participation to be satisfactory.

Homework was to make a small order of their own, e.g: I would like to order (Qty, colour, size, etc.), perhaps leave special instructions, to be delivered by...

Have a good day!

Shameem

[Scott Graham]

Hi Shameem,
Friday was quite a good day especially in the morning, I began making sure they had understanding many/much but also took them through few/a little. With the use of a handout and some examples they all seemed to have good understanding of these.

We then went onto comparitive adjectives which I elicited with a short paragraph, then i gave the ss a gap filling hand out which they seemed to complete quite well and without much problems they seemed to know when to add er, ier or more. I also explained where we double the cosonant ie big=bigger.

After lunch we tried to mention every mode of transport we could think about including the obvious like cars and trains to the not so common gondola, and rickshaw. I then gave them a worksheet which was for them to work in pairs. The idea was to guess certain things about their partner:

-My partner likes driving fast
-My partner is afraid of flying
-My partner thinks trams are a good way of reducing smog.

Then I asked them to make questions from their statements, to which their partner should answer with a reason. It was really good I turned it into a class discussion and all took part quite well. I think with this class exercises like this are good just to try and get them speaking and interacting with each other in English.

I finished the day by showing them the reason, structure and formats of 'Memos', i gave them examples.

The last half hour as always the friday fatigue came so insead of asking them to write a memo we all spoke about our ambitions, which was quite interesting.

Have fun Monday

Scott
_________________
By learning you will teach; by teaching you will learn.

[Shameem]

Hi Scott,

I'm so sorry this is so late as we've been experiencing problems with our internet connection due to some configuration problems Since installing updates it's better now after being on the dog for ages to tech' support.

Today we reviewed grammar. I wrote random sentences on w/b and asked Ss for form, e.g: inf.VERB + s/es in third person and all Present Simple forms as well as Verb + ed or irregular verbs, and so on. Most everyone did very well on this, though Stephanie and Anne need a little more practice. We also worked on the placement of adverbs in sentences and Ss thought of as many adverbs as they could.

I elicited and introduced lexis for shopping, including weights in metric and imperial, sizes, etc. We then played a shopping game to help develop memory, pronunciation and countable/uncountable nouns. Each Ss started off by saying "I went to the shop and I bought..." each time a Ss (picked randomly), had to remember each item bought (in order), and then add something to the list. Everyone enjoyed this activity!

I got Ss to describe the seasons, spell and say the days of the week, and to tell me whether we use in/at/on for months, seasons, days and time.

I then asked each Ss to read out the 'order' that I'd asked them to write for homework at the end of our last lesson, which they did very well. Anne 'lost' her homework, and said she was away on Friday too, so didn't do the questionnaire you'd set. I went through the homework you set on Friday - they did very well.

Ss also did some role play: asking for the menu, ordering a drink and asking for the bill.
This was enjoyed by all.

Most of the afternoon was spent on composing business letters for basic logisic purposes. We looked at layout, salutation, intro, main body, closing paragraphs, etc.
Almost all Ss were fully engaged in this and I clarified any quite a bit by translating if they were stuck. For homework, Ss have been asked to write a short letter using lexis they learned today. I suggested asking for information, on delivery times, price lists, storage facilites, or to be creative.

I've left the register on the desk for you.

Viel spaß!

Shameem

[Shameem]

Hi Scott,

this morning we did a review on articles which all Ss did without any problems! We did some work on opposites (random), and I tested then on some of the lexis you did
yesterday. We finally got to go online and did an exercise on the Modal Verbs: must, might, can, could, should, have to, also in the negative and past forms. We went over any new items beforehand. The results were very pleasing, which we discussed afterwards. A copy of the online exercise was printed out which Ss would like you to give them a copy tomorrow if you wouldn't mind - thanx.

I gave them some webquests for logisitcs management:

What does 3PL mean? (Third Party Logistics)
Explain why this may be used.

What does outsourcing mean?

A person that works in the field of logistics is called a ? (logistician)

We discussed the definition: 'in the field of'

I also gave them a webquest about King Henry VIII:
When was he born/did he die? at what age?
How many wives did he have?

They became very interested in this and it soon turned into a discussion about his wives, how he changed the Catholic Church, etc.

I hope you enjoy the film and walk around the city tomorrow!

Shameem