Teaching teenagers help (please!)

[profog]

Hi,

I have a class of 10 Italian teenagers (in Italy, intermediate level) 2 hours a week: I've had them 3 times and they're less than enthusiastic about what we've done so far. They want to do more conversation stuff but I'm at a loss for ideas. Any and all suggestions for dynamic activites would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks!

[alerus12]

Meaningful learning is very effective with teenager ss. What you can do to encourage them to learn English is to present them with authentic Language. What do I mean with authentic language? I refer to the term of authentic language as the usage of material that is not actually made for ss, but is a part of the target language culture. For example, something that I used to do with a teenager that I used to tutor is that when we finished the lesson quickly, I would play for him a movie in English, that encouraged him to learn more to understand more. Please, do not display movies like the Beauty and The Beast, display action movies, the ones that are in trend nowadays. Also, teaching teenagers with songs is very effective. Ask them which kind of group they like (of course in english), and use their songs to teach adjectives, nouns, any number of topics. Give them meaningful material!!!

[lindau]

I agree that what you teach should be meaningful and usable.
There's a good outdoor learning activity on http://www.montanalingua.com/fileadmin/ ... nsBuff.pdf called "Blindman's Buff" - which BTW is completely different from the original blindman's buff - two students take responsibility for a third blindfolded student and lead him/her through a mild obstacle course. Language content of this lesson includes nouns such as "branch, slope", adjectives such as "steep, slippery" and instructions such as "keep going, duck".
As it says on the Montanalingua website: "It is essential to use the target language to succeed in each challenge, and therefore it gives motivation to learn to be able to take on further challenges."
Hope this helps!