Reading Emails in Class

In my search to find authentic readings that are accessible to my students, I've sometimes raided my own email account. For example, when students are studying travel and vacation terminology, I've printed some correspondences between myself and different hotels in Argentina. Of course, the students might not know all the vocabulary included, but hopefully they can understand enough to discuss the main points. As with any reading, the steps are usually as follows:


1. Skim for Context: Students are prompted to skim the text for context clues. They should be able to immediately identify the text as an email, and can probably guess from the subject line that they are looking at questions about a hotel and the responses.
2. Read for Main Idea: Students read the text individually for the main idea. Their basic comprehension is then tested. Who is writing each email? What are the client's main concerns? What points are highlighted by the hotel? What tone is used in each email - are they polite or rude, formal or informal? How can the students tell?
3. Read for Details: Students read the text again (possibly taking turns reading aloud), this time looking at more detailed information. They then answer specific questions, either in oral or written form. Is there a double room available? What are the hotel amenities? What dates will the guests be staying? Is there a price difference for different types of rooms?

Once the students have a good understanding of the text (they don't need to know a direct translation for every term or phrase, but should have a good grasp of the meaning of the emails), there are different things the class can do for an extension. They can get into groups and discuss different emails from different hotels, and decide which they would recommend. You can visit the hotel's website and see if the information is the same. Students can discuss if they like the hotel and why, or write their own emails to a hotel requesting information.

Thank you to Galina, who did a similar activity with her Russian 1001 class this week and reminded me of this source of authentic readings.

Around-the-World Stories

In this activity, students add to each other's stories to write original stories using new vocabulary or grammar concepts. Here's what you'll do:

1. Before class, write several first sentences for new stories on otherwise blank pieces of paper. For example, one sheet of paper might simply say, "It was raining when my uncle left the house on Thursday, and he had no umbrella."
2. Give each student a different piece of paper, each with a different starting sentence. The student should then add a new sentence to the story. When finished with her sentence, she should fold the paper so that the first sentence (yours) is not visible, and pass it to the student beside her.
3. The second student should read the first student's sentence, make corrections, and then add his own sentence to continue the story - based on the prior student's sentence. He'll then fold the paper so that only his sentence is visible, and pass the paper to the student next to him.
4. The activity continues, with each student getting a paper from a student to her right, and passing a paper to the student on her left. You can decide when they've corrected and written an appropriate number of sentences and announce that the next will be the final sentence of each story.
5. The students unfold their pieces of paper, and read the stories aloud. The class can then correct errors together, and enjoy the results.

Have a happy Friday!

Film Critiques

Chantal, Italian tutor extraordinaire, has an excellent activity that gets her students watching and discussing Italian cinema. Here's how she explains it:

I have students print out the trailer poster of a movie they like or have seen and research everything they can about the movie. They then bring it to class and give a brief synopsis of the movie in Italian, of course. The other students will carry on asking questions about the movie, i.e. about the sound track, reviews written, where were these published, by whom, etc.

So, the students learn about Italian cinema outside of class as they watch and research Italian films. They then use the language both in a presentation, as they give a synopsis and some information about the film to their classmates, and then conversationally, as they respond to their classmates' questions.

What a great activity. Wonderful job, Chantal.

Smack the Word

Some of you might know this activity as "matamoscas" or "the fly swatter game," but it works like this:

For Category I and II Languages:

1. Have the vocabulary words written on the board in random order, and at different angles, when the students enter the room.
2. Ask the students to write definitions in the target language for five of the words and pass them to you.
3. Divide the class into two teams.
4. Have a representative from each team come to the board, each with a different color of marker.
5. Read a definition of a word (you might have to correct or add to the student's definition). The first student to find the word and mark it -or hit it with a fly swatter if you prefer- wins a point for their team.
6. A new student from each team comes to the board, and you read a new definition for a different word.

For Category III and IV Languages:

1. Have the vocabulary words written on the board in random order, and at different angles, when the students enter the room.
2. Divide the class into two teams.
3. Have a representative from each team come to the board, each with a different color of marker.
4. Say the word. The first student to find the word and mark it -or hit it with a fly swatter if you prefer- wins a point for their team.
5. For an additional point, each student has the chance to use the word correctly in a sentence.
6. A new student from each team comes to the board, and you continue the game with a new word.

Turn Left at the Cathedral

Here's a wonderful classroom idea from Galina, our new Russian tutor. For a class studying directions, she printed copies of Moscow's subway system. She also printed photos and descriptions (in Russian) of some famous sites and attractions around the city, noting the nearest subway station to each. Students then had to give each other directions to the different sites, using the subway map as a guide.

This activity not only provided the students with a task in which their new language felt relevant, it also gave them a bit of a cultural tie-in as they learned about Moscow.

Excellent job, Galina!

The Newlywed Game

This is actually more of a 'how well do you know your classmates?' game, but it is modeled after the old 70's game show, "The Newlywed Game." You can call it something else, but regardless of what you call it, here's what you'll do:

1. Have two students in your class pick a partner - someone they think they know pretty well, perhaps the student they've sat beside all semester. In each pair, one partner will be 'Student A' and the other will be 'Student B.'

2. Give the partners a couple of minutes to chat (in the target language, of course) - asking anything about their partner that they think they may need to know - if they have siblings, what their favorite color is, etc. While the pairs are talking, the other students - those in the "audience"- should be quietly writing questions that will be used to interview the students.

3. Send one partner from each group (the student A's) out of the room and then interview the other other partners with your student "audience." You can ask them serious questions or silly ones, and you can choose some of the questions that the student audience has written.

4. Have the other partners from each pair come back into the classroom. Ask them the questions about their partners, like "What is Maria's favorite color?" "Does she have pets?" "Does Maria like intelligent and creative men, or good-looking and rich ones?" For every answer that a student gets correct about his partner, he wins a point.

5. Send the other partner (the student B's) out of the room, and interview the student A's.

6. Call the student B's back in, and see how many questions they can correctly answer about their partners. The couple with the most correct answers wins.

I've actually never tried the above activity in class, but both our French and German professors claim that it is a lot of fun and a great way to get the students enjoying an opportunity to use the target language. It seems like a great activity to do with those 1002 or 2000-level classes that have been together as a group for a semester or two. If you do try this activity in class, let me know how it goes!

Fashion Magazines in Class!

Our newest Portuguese Tutor, Mandy, has an excellent classroom idea that I'm happy to be able to share. In a chapter in which students were studying vocabulary dealing with shopping and fashion, Mandy brought fashion magazines from Brazil to share with her students. The students read articles and discussed them - all in Portuguese - and then designed their own advertisements for the magazine. Here are some examples of the students' work:

Mandy's students really enjoyed reading authentic magazines from Brazil, and had a great time applying their new vocabulary both in conversation and in a written project to be included in their portfolios. Wonderful job, Mandy!

Using Facebook for Class Assignments

Ever wish you could match your students with actual native-speakers for outside-of-class practice? Jae, our Korean tutor, is using Facebook to do just that. Jae has a Facebook profile for his Korean classes (which he keeps professional), and gives his students assignments to post comments in Korean on the main page. His Korean friends then comment back in Korean, and correct mistakes.

For example, the assignment might be for students to give directions in Korean to their favorite Korean restaurant, using GPC Dunwoody as the starting point. Students log-on to Facebook, post their directions, and then get responses from native-speakers of Korean. The assignments often spark long conversations, and many of the students have become real-life friends with their Facebook friends.

This is a wonderful way to get the students involved and using their language skills outside of class to actually engage in a new community and make new friends. Great work, Jae!

Listening Practices with the BBC

For anyone looking to hone their language skills by listening to authentic news casts, the BBC can be a great resource. The BBC has news services for several of our languages, including: Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, and Russian. For each of these languages, you'll be able to find short videos on a diversity of topics - all narrated by native-speakers of the language of study. Since the news casts are short, students can watch them several times in order to get a general understanding of the topic discussed, or to listen for specific information and answer comprehension questions designed for their level. For example, students of Portuguese 1001 might watch the following video:



As students watch and listen, they might try to answer the following questions (to be written and answered in Portuguese, of course):
1. What is the crocodile's name?
2. What country is he from?
3. How much does he weigh?
4. What is the name of his human best friend?
5. How old is the crocodile?
6. Where are the residents of the village going to put the crocodile's body?

A class of 1002 students might watch the same video, but answer more complex questions and use the past tense (a useful modification to the practice, since the poor crocodile has passed away).

For our Category IV languages, short news videos can still be useful. We can design simple listening tasks for these students, like 'listen five times and write down all the numbers you hear', or 'describe all the people shown using at least seven different adjectives.'

If you have any other ideas of how short news casts might be used in class, or if you have a specific video you'd like to share, leave a note in the comments!

The Story Shuffle

Here's an activity that I observed in Shane's Chinese 1001 class this week:

1. When the students arrived, they saw a mixed-up story on the board (all in Chinese) and were told they had five minutes to put it into the proper order.

2. The students went to the board, each with a marker, and confronted three columns of text. For example, students doing a story shuffle in English might see...

Tomorrow, October 8th        Hank went to the store             that she finds in the classroom.
Yesterday, October 6th         Egli is eating five cookies          but he will leave hungry.
Today, October 7th              Hank will look for the cookies   and bought seven cookies.

3. As the students worked together, Shane reviewed some written assignments that students had completed at home, pulling students aside one-by-one to review their mistakes with them. As one student worked with Shane, the others continued their group work at the board.

4. After all students had reviewed their work with Shane, he told them that it was time for them to read him the story in the right order. Each student read a different sentence.

Students doing the English-language version above would read the following:
Student One: "Yesterday, October 6th, Hank went to the store and bought seven cookies."
Student Two: "Today, October 7th, Egli is eating five cookies that she finds in the classroom."
Student Three: "Tomorrow, October 8th, Hank will look for the cookies, but he will leave hungry."

After the students had read the story in the correct order (and had their pronunciation mistakes corrected), Shane asked them questions about it in Chinese (When did Hank buy cookies? Who eats the cookies? Egli, are cookies your favorite food? How many cookies will Hank find in the classroom?) Shane used the students' names and information about them in the story, and the students really enjoyed the activity.

Great activity, Shane - and nice job using time spent on group-work to quietly work with individual students as well. Nicely done!

Friday Ideas, Monday Edition

Here's my lesson plan for tomorrow - just what we're doing on a normal Tuesday afternoon.

1. Warm-up: When the students first come into the room, we're going to listen to a song in which some of their new vocabulary (mostly verbs ending in -ar) is repeated often. The students will have a copy of the song's lyrics, and will fill-in the missing words. Hopefully this will help them start to internalize the new vocabulary by seeing it in context - and repeated frequently.

2. Review: We'll then review their new -ar verb vocabulary briefly. This will be done simply by me pantomiming an action, and the students calling-out the correct verb. This will give me a chance to correct pronunciation and conjugation errors.

3. Student Interviews: I have a list of seven questions that the students will ask and answer with a partner. The questions are designed to help them practice using the -ar verbs correctly, and to review the question words. Students should speak all in Spanish, and I'll walk around the room to make corrections and keep them on-task.

4. Speaking and writing practice: After reviewing the above questions with the class to model correct answers and to correct common mistakes, I'll have the students put their new verbs to use in a lengthier task. Students will work in pairs to write a schedule for a group of tourists who are planning to spend the day in Atlanta. They'll be instructed to use their new verbs, and to spell the numbers when writing out the times. I've given them the first line of what I might write as an example: A las ocho de la mañana, desayunamos en un restaurante muy famoso, The Flying Biscuit. A las nueve y media... Students will work for about ten minutes with a partner, and then present their schedules to the group. Again, I'll walk around the room while students work to ensure that they are using Spanish to speak to each other.

Get in Line!

This week's Friday idea comes courtesy of Professor Robinson, our German professor, who calls this activity "Get in Line." Each student is given a note card with information about who is in front of them in line, and who is behind, and students must ask each other questions in order to line-up in the correct order. For example, one card might read (in the target language):

To the right: studies history
I am from Russia.
To the left: likes art

The student with this card would then walk around the classroom, asking "Do you study history?" and "Do you like art?" until she finds the people who should stand to her left and to her right. Another student might have the following card:

To the right: is from Russia
I like art.
To the left: studies economics

This student would go around the classroom asking "Are you from Russia?" and "Do you study economics?" until he found his proper place in line. Of course, you might want one card to read "To the right: Nobody" and another card to read "To the left: Nobody" - or else you'll have a circle instead of a line.

When the students have lined-up, they can prove that they are in the proper order by making a statement and asking a question: "I am from Russia. Do you like art?" "I like art. Do you study economics?" If they are in the correct order, each student will ask a question to the person on their right, and get a 'yes' for an answer. If not, students will have to ask questions again to rearrange themselves.