Christmas error correction

Will get onto combining grammar mistakes and Xmas lessons in a bit, but first: 

I’ve become a bit of a cultural relativist in my old age, even accepting stuff that drives other people nuts like Japanese English, but this time of year seems to bring out the grumpy old traditionalist in me. The fact that there’s been quite a lot of telling about an English Xmas in my lessons could be just because Japanese students tend to love that kind of stuff (maybe because anything that mentions the rest of the world is an escape from Japanese reality at the same time as being a reinforcement of why Japan is different and special). What seems to reflect something deeper is the fact that I’ve found myself actually correcting them on the “errors”of how Xmas is done in Japan- several times on the same points to different classes! Apparently these are the things that happen in Japan that test my limits of acceptance of difference and stir as much deep discomfort in my soul as female circumcision or animal cruelty:

- Error correction No 1: Xmas cakes cannot have strawberries. Being a sponge cake rather than a nice heavy fruit cake is stretching the limits of my tolerance, but having strawberries on a cake in the winter is just going too damn far!

- Error correction No 2: Xmas is for turkey, not for chicken- I don’t care if roast chicken tastes better than roast turkey, that’s just the way it has to be. And if it really must be chicken, it can be any chicken but KFC!

- Error correction No 3: Although even I think that 12 days of Xmas is stretching it a bit, taking Xmas decorations down on Xmas day is not acceptable. Again, the fact that the Japanese new year decorations that go up in their place are much more attractive and tasteful will in no way be accepted as an excuse!

Think that’s all for now, so let’s get onto the real error correction for teachers whose inner old fogey is stirred by the misuse of the language rather than the misuse of Xmas-

A couple of really nice ideas I got from a teacher today with strict instructions to put them on my blog, and as I’ve been in Japan long enough to become scared of foreign women* I have no choice but to comply:

- Grammar auction is a good activity for almost everything, but somehow it has become one of those great games that I once did all the time and then totally forgot about. Write out 10 sentences including common errors or recent grammar points (in this case, in sentences about Xmas) and add errors to about half the sentences. Students then try to pick out the good sentences and bid only for them in an auction.

A similar pairwork activity is to add errors to all the sentences and then spread the correct and wrong versions of them over the Student A and Student B sheets. The students then get together in pairs to read their versions to each other, decide together which one is correct and correct the sentences they have which are wrong. Again, add a reindeer or two to the sentences and you have as Merry a Xmas version as you ever could want.

And the cherry on top of the TEFL Xmas cake:

- Snowball mixer. Each student writes their favourite winter sport, favourite winter food, favourite item of winter clothing and one other winter thing I can’t remember right now on four seperate pieces of scrap paper. They then screw each one up like a snowball and spend 30 seconds throwing them around the room. After the time limit they have to pick up 4 pieces of paper and then find the people who originally wrote them by asking questions. Nice!

* Obviously only joking about being forced to put them up. Many thanks for these,  E, and if you are reading, let me know if you are happy to have your full name put up to get the credit from the adoring crowds.

Photo “borrowed” from here.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 12:50 pmand is filed under Christmas lessons, Christmas themed lessons for adult classes, Cultural differences/ cultural training, Cultural relativism, Error correction, Error correction games, Festivals and celebrations lessons, Grammar games, TEFL games, Teaching grammar, Variations on find someone who, festivals and celebrations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.