Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Enthusiasm....it might be worth a try?

In most of my classes, I'm pretty "enthusiastic."  When you're talking to students who don't really understand English that well necessarily, things like gestures and voice inflection are really important, so I try to do a fabulous job of that.  And, I also try to make funny, simple jokes.  And, it's a good thing I do, according to this article!

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Four Corners 2 Speaking Test




The semester is coming to a close, which means it's speaking test time!  Here are my test questions, loosely based on 4 Corners 2, units 5-9 which I gave to the students beforehand.  There are 9 questions, and I interview 3 students at the same time, so 3 questions/student (randomly chosen). It takes around 13 minutes for the group of 3.

Note that these are just general categories--I will never give students questions more specific than this since it leads to just straight memorization and isn't really an accurate reflection of actual conversation ability.

I grade the students based on 4 categories, all equally weighted: understand the questions/grammar +vocab/fluency/interesting + detailed answers.

1. Healthy/ Unhealthy habits.  How often/ how much/how many


2. TV.  Pg. 56/ 59


3. Shopping.  Where do you buy clothes?  Why/ how often, etc.


4. A market in your neighborhood (look at pages 72/73).  


5. Places to visit.  Should/ Can.  Page 77-5 (speaking)


6. Where can I…..? (page 142).


7. Jobs: best/ worst in your opinion (from page 86).


8.Page 86-2.  Who would you like to meet?  What are 3 or 4 interesting questions you would ask them.

9.Who is a person that you admire (past or present).  Where/when/what, etc….? What were/are they like?



Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Why I'm doing the Delta

Check out  my guest post on Profs Abroad.  And check out all the other stuff on that site too, it's one of the good ones.

And don't forget to get my go-to resource for the Delta: An A-Z of ELT