I am finally out of the woods!

Today's class went fairly well. It went much more smoothly than Friday's class. I think that may have been due to the fact that this was my second time, so I knew more of what to expect, ie I was prepared. It was not only that though, it was the flow, too. Things just felt in place and I felt that my transitions from one activity to the next were better than it had been in other classes in the past couple of weeks. Of course, I don’t feel sick anymore, although on Saturday I had a little bicycle accident, but nothing broken, so I think today I was in a more energetic mood, and to be honest, for a Monday morning class, I think they are also quite lively, which I think always helps.

We started with the review, which did not take too long, and then moved on to the word stress review. This time I had one member of each pair come up to check the answers, which I thought was more effective than doing it as a group. However, once everyone had come up we practiced the pronunciation as a group.

Once the word stress was completed, I dictated some questions to them. I changed one of the questions this time because last time I asked the question: Where are they? However, it was quite difficult to know the answer just by listening, so I went with something a little easier. I then asked individual students for their answers, and then had them repeat after the CD. I then asked them to practice the conversation with a partner for a couple of minutes before asking different pairs to come up to the front to present. I also mentioned to them to use their energy and to consider themselves actors and actresses to help them with pronunciation and intonation. I think this encouragement worked well because the pairs I chose did not just read from the book in a monotone manner, but they actually tried to read it in a more affective manner.

After that, I had them repeat after me some expressions that they can use if they don’t understand what someone says. I did not go into any deep explanation because many of the questions had been introduced in the first class as classroom English, so this was more of a review than anything for them.

Next, we did a short dictation activity in the book. There were three conversations and they had to listen and fill in the blanks. I then asked them to practice each conversation with their partner.

I then had two students hand out the vocabulary worksheet and before I had them start I had them repeat the words after me. This activity did not take them too long to finish, so while I was asking them for the answers, I would ask them questions such as ‘Do you like…?’ or ‘Do you often eat…?’ I probably should not have continued to do this so much because by the time we finished there was not a lot of time left for the final conversation practice. What I had planned was to have them memorize the conversation using what they liked and then choose some pairs to present, but this time I just got them to practice and I walked around asking certain pairs to present for me individually.