Story-telling

April 20, I think my seniors students had lots of fun today. They told the stories according to the pictures (please see the attachment) that I gave them last week. Before doing story-telling practice, we did “outside reading”--- one story from the Bible, Joseph, as today’s warm-up. I took the low-level version that they might catch the main ideas easily. I made my students retold the story with what, who, why, where and how questions. In this way, they could apply to tell an organized story.

There were four stories coming out in class; story 1 was from Nancy’s group, story 2 was from Carol, story 3 was from Joseph, and story 4 was from Jean. I’d like to share the two stories of them; Carol’s and Jean’s were more creative and organized.

Story 2: by Carol
Picture A: A department store had a big sale. A thief stole some clothes when the salesclerk didn’t notice him.
Picture B: After the salesclerk found something wrong, he ran after the thief on the street.
Picture E: They had an argument, and there were some strangers watching them.
Picture C: Finally, the thief admitted stealing. He then kneeled down and begged forgiveness.

Story 4: by Jean
Picture D: My parents were watching TV at home.
Picture E: They then heard noises outside the window.
Picture A: They decided to go shopping. They shopped till midnight.
Picture F: My mom fell asleep when my dad drove her home.

Of course, they made some mistakes while telling stories. But they were still willing to try; and I always admire the good learning attitudes they have.

Cindy R Shih

Making up Stories by Pictures

On April 8, I attended a special online class “Teaching English to Seniors” by Professor Terry Doyle of City College, San Francisco. Thanks to the useful software and websites, modern people can take long-distance courses easily. For some who are computer challenging, like me, it’s a great opportunity to improve English teaching and computer operating skills at the same time.

During the one-and-a-half hour live conference, I got some practical ideas about teaching seniors such as enlarging texts, seniors relevant topics and learning phrases through movie scripts. I’ve printed out all the power point scripts which would become one of my references.

My senior students go to church to take my class. The classroom is, indeed, a conference room where there are no TV set or computer and big screen that I can play DVDs with. Since watching movies is an effective way to improve English, according to Professor Terry Doyle’s observation in his classes, I would at least try to move the class to the equipped chapel and start with clips from movies or “commercial downloaded via internet” (an idea from my teacher, Aiden Yeh) in my class in the near future.

Today, April 13, we continued studying the article that story was about an argument-loving journalist. We got started with our small talk “What situation would you argue with others?” Cherry said, “I usually argue with my 35-year-old daughter while she’s wearing mini skirt. I think it is not suitable for her age.” I asked her, “Does your daughter listen to you?” “No, she says I’m not fashion.” Cherry answered. Meanwhile, I taught them how to use words: in fashion, out of fashion, fashionable… We also did all the exercises attached in the unit.

In today’s lesson, I applied the image-concept Professor Terry Doyle offered in class practice. I put eight drawing pictures with characters and scenes on the white board and made students pick four out of them. They then could make up stories in their own ways. For example, if they picked pictures A, C, G, H and put them in the order they liked. They then started to describe what happened, who they were, where they were, when it happened…. There were five groups working on this exercise. At the end of the class, there were no stories coming out yet. They took shrunk-sized copy to create the stories as their homework. (I’m looking forward to their interesting stories; some of them are pretty creative and humorous.) Time flies, we didn’t have any time left to review the three songs we’ve learned this semester. I hope they can spend a little time on practicing with the CD and lyrics offered by me previously.

Cindy R Shih

Practice with Games

Today, April 6, we moved on a new lesson, Unit 14; the story is about a journalist who likes arguing with others. He doesn’t care whom he argue with. Before the text start, we had a small talk: What situation would you argue with others?
The answer from Jean was: “I always argue with my husband while driving; we have different ideas about routes.” I asked her,” Who wins usually? She said, “My husband does. I don’t want to hurt his feelings, he thinks he is smarter.”
Joseph said, “I don’t argue with others. Especially, friends, I think friendship is more important than argument.”

This time I’d like to avoid boring class while working on the texts. I made them a few teams, and then we practiced words and sentences with games.
The first game: Use “air- conditioning” to make more words like, acting, riding, doing, condition..
The second game: I wrote a word on a piece of paper and let them make a long sentence; the longer the better. They both did a great job, but there were a few mistakes in the sentences. So, they learned from mistakes.

We didn’t finish the whole article yet, we were about in the middle of the passage. I’ve taught some vocabulary and phrases: whom, as adj. /adv. as, mind + V.ing, the more adj… the more adj…
I think, today’s lesson went smoothly. Hope they did learn something from me.

Cindy R Shih

Speaking Practice

Today, March 30, we got started with the same warm-up topic which is related with our texts: "What would you do when it is out of power in the summer?"
Lisa said, “ I would go to a coffee shop with my books and order something to eat and then enjoy the air-conditioning there.”
Cherry said, “ If I know it would be out of power in advance, I would plan a one-day trip somewhere. Or I might call on some friends who are sick and stay in the hospital. I want to pray for them and comfort them.” I told them, “This is the best idea I’ve ever heard.”

The second part of the lesson, we moved on the exercise, Unit 13; we did T/F, answer the questions, and fill in the blanks. I made them to speak out more while doing the activities. In general, they can answer most of the attached questions after reading.

We started learning a new song: Greatest Love of All. There are so many encouraging phrases in the lyrics like, “Children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way.” “Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be.” “I decided long ago never to walk in anyone’s shadow.” “Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all.” While playing the music at the first time, I gave them the uncompleted lyrics; I’d like them to improve their listening with this practice. If they didn’t catch all the correct words or phrases to complete the lyrics, it’s still fine; they can do it at home—everyone has got their own CD.

Cindy R Rae

Boring and Fun at the Same Time

Last Monday, March16, we previewed the reading text a little bit. And then I wrote a question on the board for them to think about when the class was almost done. The question was related the unit (13) topic about air-conditioning: What would you do when it is out of power in the summer?
Today, March 23, there were some interesting answers coming out during the warm up.
Tony said, “I would find a flashlight and then light up a candle… “I asked, “Would you then have a candlelight dinner with your wife?” He responded shyly, “Yes, yes.”
Nancy said, “I would go to the department store to enjoy the air-conditioning,” I continued, “and shopping?” she said, “Right, but sometimes not.” I said,” Or you may go window shopping.”
Joseph said, “I would go to the movie theater to see the movies and feel cool there.”
Lucille said, “I would go to the swimming pool to cool down my body and exercise.”
(They didn’t sound like elder people, did they?)

Today’s lesson would be a little bit boring, I thought. I needed to explain the instructions of the sentences and grammar and also translate the meanings of the paragraphs. It took me about 30 minutes to finish the text teaching. Later on, we moved on the fun part--- song time. We started learning a new song “Imagine – by John Lennon”. There was some very useful vocabulary in the lyrics. I had written some nouns like: heaven, peace, world, possessions, brotherhood… on some pieces of paper (A4 size). While listening to the music, they held up the word that they were holding to match the lyrics. They did a great job and had lots of fun; they acted so energetically. It's hard to believe that some of them are at their 80s!?

Cindy R Shih

Talk in English can be fun

I think my students had lots of fun while practicing conversation in English yesterday, Mar. 16. I made all of them work in pair talking with the handout. Some of them did a pretty good job; those dialogues were like:



A asked,"What's your favorite fruit?"

B responded,"My favorite fruit is pineapple." "Do you like pineapple?

A responded, " No, I don't. It's sour."



C asked, "where can I try Taiwanese local food?"

D responded, "You can go to Rei-Fong night market?

C asked, "How can I get there?"

D responded," You can take bus number 94."



E asked, " What is seasonal fruit now?"

F responded, " It's bell fruit (wax apple) ?''

E asked, " Do you like it?"

F responded, "Yes, I do. How about you?"

E responded, " Me too."

( I taught them they can also say " I do, too." or "So do I." And I found their favorite topic is FOOD.)



This kind of conversation went on about 20 minutes, and then the new student, Tony, just entered into the classroom. As Laura didn't have a conversational partner, she turned to him immediately.



Laura: "Why are you late? Did you forget this class?"

Tony: "No, I didn't. I had some matters."

(After his explanation, I told them Tony's words meant, "I ran some errands this morning."

And then Carol asked me, " What's the difference between errands and chores?" I answered," For example: Going to banks, paying bills, mailing letters.... are errands; cleaning rooms, doing dishes or laundry.... are chores.")



We had a reading time yesterday. The article posted below:



Reading Unit 13 Copied from: Intermediate Steps to Understanding
OXFORD University Press
Text:
Mr. Hodge was a chicken farmer. He had hundreds of chickens, and sold the eggs and the meat and got quite a lot of money for them, but he lived in very hot part of the country, and he found that his hens laid hardly any eggs in the summer. So he decided to put air-conditioning into his chicken-house so that the hens would lay well all through the year and he could get more eggs and in that way earn more money.

The owner of the company which sold the air-conditioning came to see him, and when he saw Mr. Hodge’s house, he thought that he might be able to persuade him to buy some air-conditioning for that too.

“Your wife would be much happier and more comfortable then, “he said to Mr. Hodge. But Mr. Hodge was not interested.
“My wife doesn't lay eggs,” he said.



After taking turns reading out loud, I interpreted some key words in the passage.

Like: lay, laid, laid ; lie, lied, lied ; lie, lay, lain those verbs are easy to get confused.

Laid hardly; how to use hard as a adj. or a adv. also what "hardly" (adv.) means? .. so that,

..in that way.... We may talk about" which" and "that" more next time. And we'll do some exercises attached in the textbook like T/F and filling the blanks. I hope they'd still have fun.



Cindy R Shih

Conversation Pracice

Yesterday, March 9, there were a couple of students sharing about their stories during the winter vacation or Chinese New Year or Lantern Festival. We also used the handout which I gave them last time to practice conversation in pair. There were some groups of vocabulary regarding places, spots and festivals that they could apply to useful sentences. They could pick words like: Lantern Festival, Love River to make up dialogues.

For example, student 1 : What do you do at Lantern Festival?
student 2 : I watch lanterns and fireworks by Love River with my family.

Before finishing the part 2 grammar, we reviewed present tense and past tense.
I wrote some questions on the board for them to practice:

1. " Where is your mother?" "She's out."
2. "How much are these postcards?" "Fifty cents."
3. Terry worked in a bank from 1987 to 1998.
4. "How did the accident happen?" " I don't know. I didn't see it."

At the end of the class, I explained some vocabulary in the lyrics of the song "Put Your Head on My Shoulder." And then they sang along with the CD played. Because I let someone to record the class while it proceeding, some of them acted nervously. But, I do hope they would learn something from me and improve their conversational skills.

Cindy R Shih