This turned out to be a great topic for an upper-intermediate adult class 🙂 : Men vs women stereotypical behaviour when arguing.
Flickr Photo by Niko Kahkonen under CC BY NC-SA- 2.0
Outline of the lesson:
- Describe a scenario to the Ss where a couple (man and a woman) are having an argument, for example at a restaurant, at a bus stop, in the supermarket, etc.
- Ask Ss to discuss in pairs: Stereotypically, how are they behaving differently?
- Open class feedback
- Provide your students with a vocabulary list on behavioural tendencies which they must categorise in a Venn diagram, whether it is more likely of a man, a woman or both. Examples : withdraw, beat around the bush, be straightforward, cry, raise the tone of voice, be sarcastic, roll your eyes, etc.
- Work on the vocabulary with the Ss – meaning and pronunciation – and have them work in small groups to contrast their opinions. This is more interesting if you can mix men and women within the same group.
- Open class feedback
- Ss will watch the following video : Weird things all couples fight about.
- Before they do so, ask them to predict what they arguments will be about. Let them know they are everyday minor arguments a couple would have.
- Play the video. Ss check for their predictions.
- If want and have time, play it twice, the second time with the captions so that they can focus on language for further work on colloquial speech.
- Ideally, pair up male and female students and ask them to switch roles for the task. (The man should play the woman and viceversa)
- Give them time to prepare a 30 second role play of an argument similar to the ones in the video. Ask them to try and include as much stereotypical behaviour as possible.
- Each pair will perform in front of the whole class. After each performance, the audience must:
(a) Describe what the argument was about
(b) Point out any stereotypical behaviour
(c) Rate the performance from 1-10 based on: creativity and humour, language use and dramatisation skills.
Photo from Flickr by Ricky Thakrar under CC BY -NC-ND 2.0
Here is an exciting and dynamic game I used in class the other day to review vocabulary. It is similar to the Chinese Whispers classic but with a competitive twist to it. 🙂
– Divide your students into two teams and your board into two halves. The teams will line up facing the board perpendicularly.
– Shout out a vocabulary topic you’d like to review.
– Starting from the last student in line, they will whisper a word along the team members and the first student in line will write it on the board. Once he/she has finished writing it, they must move to the end of the line and keep it going to write as many words as possible.
– If a member of the group considers there is a spelling error, they are allowed to correct it when it’s their turn to be at the board.
– To increase the excitement, after a couple of minutes, change the vocabulary topic. 🙂
– This game could also be used as a warm up task to brainstorm vocabulary on a topic that is about to be covered.
– Pronunciation focus: Ask students to come up with vocabulary that includes certain phonemes.
– Grammar focus: Shout out a prepositions and students will write down matching verbs. HAVE FUN 🙂
I found a lovely video that I used with a Pre-Intermediate class on blind dates and I couldn’t help sharing it. 🙂
Outline of the lesson:
- Use the video as a lead in. Stop it at various points and ask students what they think will happen next.
- Elicit the context (a blind date) and provide them with some discussion questions related to what happened in the video.
- What does he/she look like? vs. What is he/she like? Teach descriptive adjectives for physical appearance and character/personality.
- Provide students with some dating profiles. In pairs they can focus on the language style and the vocabulary and discuss which personal qualities would be more valuable or important to them.
- Using those same dating profiles or asking students to write their own profile on a post it note ( it could be about a person they know) ask them to mingle, ask questions and try to find the perfect match.
- Finally, give them some general questions about blind dates (personal experiences, what could go wrong?, advice on good spots for a blind date in their city, who should pay? etc)
Date</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user5407066″>Hallie
Wilson</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>
AN IDEA FOR USING PHOTOS IN CLASS
At the moment I am gleefully reading Sir Ken Robinson’s The Element, a profoundly inspiring read I strongly recommend.
His views on intelligence, imagination and creativity have led me to create a new page on my blog:
(click on link or menu to have a look at my first few 🙂 Please feel free to use them in class )
Here I combine my long-ago interest in the power of images, more recently on photography specifically, with my love for creating teaching materials.
How great do you need to be at something to feel confident enough to share it with others and be motivated to dig deeper into your potential????
I’ve never taken a photography course. I don’t even have a great camera.
Taking this into account, I find that using my own photos as class material is a good way to promote the idea that you do not need to be professionally skilled to make a creative use of something that has a bit of yourself. 🙂
And of course, it’s going to be a great experience to see language emerge from sharing my very own photos.
This is why I have chosen this new section of my blog to fulfill my second goal FEED YOURSELF INSPIRATION, for the 30 Goals Challenge founded by Shelly Terrell.
These photographs are snippets of moments I have lived and beautiful things I have seen which I felt the need to capture. They are inspiring to me because they are a reminder of my creative potential regardless my expertise. I will admit I find them beautiful and feel proud to share them.
As a teacher, I believe this is something we should promote in our students: explore, create, enjoy and value your own potential.