2009年3月2日 星期一

How to improve my students' speaking skills

The elderly course has started on March 2. According to my schedule, we'd have :

(1) Small talk: How was your winter vacation or Chinese New Year or Lantern Festival or Valentine's Day going?

(2) Grammar Review:
Simple Present:
1. _______________ TV very often. (we/not/watch)
2. How often _______________ her hair? (she/wash)
3. I enjoy travelling, but ________________ very much. (I/not/travel)

Simple Past and Past Continuous:
1. The phone _______ (ring) while Sue ___________ (cook) dinner.
2. When I ______(get) to the office, Mike and Jane ___________ (work).
3. I _______ (hear) a noise, so I ______ (look) out the window. PART 1
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Present Perfect:
1. A: Who’s that man?
B: I don’t know. I _______________ (see) him before.
2. Mark and Liz are married. They __________ married for five years.
3. A: Do you like London?
B: Yes. I ______________ there four times.

Passive:
1. This house ____________ (build) 100 years ago.
2. Where ________ (be) you born? “In Los Angeles.”
3. We ___________(not/invite) to the party last week. PART 2
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(3) Learning a new song:
Put Your Head on My Shoulder

There were three of them sharing the stories regarding their winter vacation or holidays. Cherry who can speak better English said that she went to an amusement park with her daughter and son-in-law. During the description, I caught a mistake she made. She said, " They took many beautiful pictures FOR me." I got this opportunity to teach some terms about photograph.

I didn't finish the two parts of grammar review. We just finished part 1, some of them still had hard time using correct modals; 'cause modals have no meanings in Chinese.

Most of my students would like to improve their speaking skills. I'm planning doing it. Next time we would practice some useful conversational sentences that can be used while travelling. We are also going to learn the vac. of the lyrics (Put Your Head on My Shoulder).

As for me, sometimes I am confused about the translations of tourist spots in English. For example, a famous Taiwanese aboriginal amusement park named, Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village. But I hadn't learned the accurate name before Cherry mentioned. (I thought it could be : Nine-Aboriginal-Tribe Culture Village something like that.) I myself should work on it as well.

Cindy R Shih

2 則留言:

  1. Dear Cindy,

    This sounds like a great lesson plan. I would also love to sing 'put you head on my shoulder'- I guess that gives away my age ;-)

    Let me know when you will be doing your video recording.

    This blog is looking good.

    Aiden Yeh

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  2. Cindy,

    Here's a short bio of Terry Doyle. I will put everything on a webpage.

    Here is my bio: Terry Doyle has been an ESL teacher at City College of San Franciscosince 1978. He has taught all of those years but one in non-credit classes. These classes include many retired seniors, He teaches all levels and skills, but he specializes in using authentic movies to teach ESL. He has also collaborated with another teacher on organizing a Video Drama club. He graduated from UC Berkeley with an MA in linguistics, from San Francisco State University with a MA in TESOL, and from the University of San Francisco with an EdD in Multicultural and International Education. His dissertation was on language maintenance among Chinese families in San Francisco. His research interests center on NNEST issues and intercultural communication and the connection between these two. He is also currently compiliing a Movie-Idioms dictionary which he plans (with the help of some weboholic) to put on a website.

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