Tuesday

Normally, Tuesday is one of my busiest days but due to Carnival, today I just have one class. Someone once told me that here in Brazil, the year doesn’t truly start until after Carnival and I can now see the honest truth in this statement. A lot of people save their years holidays and take a full month off around February time; many travelling abroad, many visiting family and friends around Brazil, some just simply relaxing at home. In my case, almost 50% of my students fall into this category so the last few weeks have been quiet for me. However, this will all change as of next week so for now, I need to make the most of this relaxed blessing!

I still have some classes to teach though, so today has been a day of preparation for the upcoming week. This evening I have a class with Mary, one of my most dedicated and self-motivated students. We have recently been enjoying games and listening to songs in class (I love these kind of classes, without a doubt my absolute favourites) so today, we’ll revert back to the textbook for some vocabulary exercises, reading and business discussions. I use the Market Leader with my business students; in Mary’s case, the Upper Intermediate. It’s a great textbook although by itself, it could become repetitive and boring, partciularly with a 1-1 class so I always supplement it with additional materials including videos, newspapers and articles. I find www.breakingnewsenglish.com great for a last minute, interesting worksheet and the students enjoy the difference too.

As well as many other classes, the one class I have put a lot of focus on preparing for today is a class I teach with two woman on Wednesday’s, both very lively and talkative and more than happy to completely digress from the topic. They just want mostly conversational classes, which, I feel, still requires a lot of preparation to ensure the class is using an interesting topic and thus, filling it with lively and dynamic discussion. This is important for both the student and me, in my opinion. If I’m bored by the topic, within 30 seconds the students will be too. The get-me-out-of-here-NOW atmosphere is the kind that brings nightmares to teachers and needs to be avoided at all costs.

So, for this lesson, I have selected a video from www.ted.com. This website is a must for all teachers of adult esl learners as it provides short, topical videos that students want to know about and, most importantly, talk about. You can select a video based on themes or speakers and you can pick different lengths too. The sub-categorisation of the videos really helps select the video of relevance for you.

I have picked this particular video: http://www.ted.com/talks/ric_elias.html.

Before watching the video, my students will make predictions as to what they think the speaker will be talking about and why the think this. Also, do they have any initial opinions of the video? After we have watched it, they can look back and compare their pre- and post- expectations.

During the video, they will write down ten words each that they find interesting or they don’t know and after, we’ll discuss these particular words. Why do they find these words interesting? As well as exploring new words and concepts based on unknown vocabulary.

After this, we’ll discuss the content itself and comparing their own thoughts and feelings towards the subject.

This exercise will easily fill the whole hour class and like I said, these ladies love to talk so I’m confident a lively discussion will seed from this! I love these kinds of classes as they are interesting, inspiring and you never know what kind of opinions and ideas will be bounced around the room! It’s educational for me as well as my esl students!