Is that right? Wow! How awful!

I had intended to do Friday’s blogs over the weekend, but for some mysterious reason my Internet decided to stop working this weekend, so here I am, Monday posting the blogs.

As usual, I started with the review test. It took a little longer for them all to finish because this time I made it a little longer; the tests so far have been quite short, and I am thinking that making them a little longer might be better because it will give them a chance to review more of the material.



Next, I began sentence stress. As I was considering after the general English class, I decided not to use the different size dots for the stress, but simply a big dot for stressed words, and I gave them the option of using a small dot for the unstressed ones. Also, like in Thursday’s class, this activity took some time (around 25 minutes from introduction to completion and practice). Similarly, the students did not have so much trouble with the stress, but I will continue to focus on sentence stress nevertheless because I think only one time is really not enough, especially if that is the only time they look at such a subject.

Today’s unit focused on rejoinders, expressions used to show interest, to react to what the speaker is saying. I did not use the word rejoinders, as many students would not know what this was, and besides, the textbook I am using explains it in Japanese, one of the reasons why I chose this particular book. We started the unit with comprehension questions that I dictated. I then had them repeat the conversation after the CD. We then practiced the expressions as a group (I also talked about facial expression and how it was important to match the rejoinder to the appropriate facial expression for effect.) before continuing with the next activity, a crossword puzzle based on the expressions (Unfortunately, I cannot provide a copy of the activity due to an error that results with paint when I try to copy and paste it.). For this activity, I had them close their books, naturally.

After correcting the vocabulary, we did a listening activity in the book that asked the students to put a check where they heard the rejoinders. I then asked them to listen again and write them down. Finally, I had the students practice the conversation with a partner, taking turns to be the one who used the rejoinders. By the time we finished this, there was not enough time to move on, so I let them go.