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How do I prepare for conversational English lessons?

Q: Dear Lucy, I'm about to start teaching Conversational English to a group of Dutch adults, I've yet to meet them and there for have no idea of their levels. Can you advise me of any good books or websites that might help? Also what exactly does Conversational English cover? I was told that grammar isn't really a main focus only if its necessary. Please any advice is most welcome! Ruth

A: Dear Ruth, I suggest you keep the focus of the lessons on getting students to speak and keep language work to a minimum. You can do this by giving the students a speaking activity and allow them to work in pairs or groups. It would be helpful to pre-teach some vocabulary that might be used during the activity, but try to keep this stage brief.

While they are speaking, you can go around and note examples of good work and errors that are made. Have a feedback stage where the students can summarise to the class what they discussed, then you can go over examples of good work as well as the errors you noted down. Let the students see the errors and give them an opportunity to correct them themselves. If you find that many students make the same mistake or that students make the same error every week, you could do some grammar work. However, the students have enrolled for a conversation class and so they will be expecting mostly conversation.

I suggest you take a topic that everybody can talk about for the first lesson, e.g. holidays. During the first lesson, find out how the students will be using English and in what situations. This will help you plan further lessons. As for the level, I suggest you contact the school or whoever is organising the classes. They will be able to give you an idea of the level; this will help you plan accordingly.

As for books, you can try: Discussions that Work by Penny Ur and Role Plays for Today by Jason Anderson.

You could take a look at this link to Talking Point lesson plans for conversation classes on TEFL.net:
http://www.tefl.net/esl-lesson-plans/esl-worksheets-tp.htm

Best regards,
Lucy

More answers from Lucy

Talking Point: Magic
A light-hearted lesson on a perennially popular topic. Activities include lots of useful themed vocabulary as well as common topic-related idioms. Students are encouraged to exercise their fluency through both general and personalised conversation questions such as: "Why are magic stories so popular with children?" And, "What was your favourite magic story as a child, and why?"

download lesson plan...

Talking Point worksheets are designed for pre-intermediate and above levels. They are printer-friendly and come with Teaching Suggestions and answers.

 

Which is a measure of the intensity of sound?

a) the hearing aid
b) the sound barrier
c) the decibel

See end of newsletter for answer.

Teaching quote of the day

"(Rod Ellis) recommends holding off teaching grammar to beginning students because the early stages of acquisition are primarily lexically rather than grammatically based and because of the evidence from immersion programs that learners are able to acquire word order and 'salient inflection' without direct instruction" Nick C. Ellis in Form-focused Instruction and Teacher Education- Studies in honour of Rod Ellis

Makes a lot of sense to me. This might be a good place also to make a mention of New Inside Out Beginner (Macmillan), which I had a thorough look at yesterday and was mighty impressed by. It manages to fit in easy bits that are often missed out even at this low level (e.g. colours) and useful language that doesn't usually get covered properly at any level (e.g. What is your favourite...?/ What is your dream job?) without having the usual bittiness of books that try to fit too many points in (e.g. Natural English).

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Total English Advanced
JJ Wilson, Antonia Clare, Will Moreton
Publisher: Pearson Longman

Total English Advanced consists of a Students' Book, Teacher's Resource Book with Test Master CD-ROM Workbook with key and "Catch Up" CD-ROM and DVD film bank.

Total English Advanced is the last part of a new general English textbook series, taking learners from A1 to C1 level on the Common European Framework (CEF) proficiency scales. For those less familiar with the CEF, this means that by the end of the advanced course, students are expected to possess the following skills:

"Can understand a wide range of demanding longer texts and recognise implicit meaning. Can express himself/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on a wide range of subjects, showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors and cohesive devices...

read on...

Reviewed by Christian Jones

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c) the decibel

This is a level 5 question and answer from Word Up, the ESL board game that's fun to play in class.