Modern mishaps can illuminate traditional proverbs.
One website goes down, essays get lost, and the email gets blocked for a few days. Frustration mounts. I recall the Bulgarian proverb, “we learn by stumbling.” I cool down, take a breath, and try to appreciate the process of resurrecting a modern communications miracle (website) and move an evolving blog.
How’s it going? Slow. But please be patient. Compelling Conversations will soon be back, improved, and ready for further technological improvements. Some changes will work; some will fail.
Sometimes time just seems to escape, and we fall behind. Despite the alarm clocks, cell phones, and wrist watches, and many labor-saving appliances, the hours just seem to rush by, the work piles remain, and time vanishes. Modern life can feel more hectic than relaxing – even in summer.
This uncomfortable experience that life is too hectic is quite familiar to adult education students who often work two jobs, take care of their family, and go to school at night.
ESL Teacher: What do you like to do you in free time?
Adult ESL Student:What is free time?
Many college and university English language students feel pressured and short of time. I’ve had ESL students tell me that “sleep is for the weak” and they can’t afford to get even six hours, let alone eight hours of sleep. This lack of sleep, of course, reduces their ability to think clearly, write strong papers, and increases their stress levels.
ESL teachers, who sometimes work at two or more locations, can also feel overwhelmed and stressed by deadlines, traffic jams, and work loads. Getting to class ten minutes early is a wonderful practice, but many evening ESL instructors find it difficult to squeeze just 10 extra minutes into their crammed schedule.
Therefore, it’s useful for ESL teachers and English instructors to teach a few helpful phrases to English language learners to use when they need more time at work or school for projects and class assignments.
Can I have an extra hour?
Can you give me an extension?
Is there any way we can postpone this?
When is the absolute final deadline?
Do I have to work overtime?
Can I have the weekend off?
Is there somebody else who can do this?
Would it be okay to turn this in a day late?
Can I turn that paper in next week?
While nobody would ever fall behind on their work schedules in the perfect world, ESL teachers and students live and work under imperfect and sometimes challenging circumstances.We should, therefore, help our students develop the vocabulary and verbal skills to request extensions, reduce their stress levels, and shift deadlines. Students should also be prepared to explain why they need an extra time.
These requests may be denied, ignored, or accepted, but our students should at least have the vocabulary to ask for more time.
How can English language teachers create a rigorous, tolerant, and focused classroom atmosphere?
One effective technique is encouraging English students, especially ESL students, to “learn by doing” and “make good mistakes” as they expand their vocabulary, experiment with new sentence structures, and use English more in their daily lives. A good mistake, as I explain on the first day of class, is a logical error that makes sense, but just happens to be wrong. For example, a young boy might think 2+2= 22. You can see the logic, but the answer is wrong. The student needs to know that 2+2=4. But you can also acknowledge that “22″ is a good mistake. Some teachers might consider this mistake a systems error or category confusion.
Far too many ESL students, especially in countries that worship standardized exams, have created psychological barriers to experimenting in English. These students often want to avoid making any mistakes, and prefer to remain silent in conversation class to expanding their verbal skills. The ESL teacher, therefore, has to directly confront this trend or learned behavior. You can’t learn to speak a new language without making mistakes.
So I encourage English students, in both conversation and writing classes, to make good mistakes. Take chances. Try something new. Stretch your learning muscles. And make good mistakes. A good mistake is also a mistake that we acknowledge and learn from and avoid repeating. A good mistake is not a good mistake if you’ve made it ten times before in a class or on previous papers. Students usually understand, relax a bit, and proceed to experiment a bit more in our crazy, confusing, and misspelled English language.
Our goal, I sometimes joke on that first day, is to make many good mistakes, learn from these good mistakes, and move forward to make new, different, and even better good mistakes.” We usually realize this goal in our English classes!
Americans love to create, read, and discuss top ten lists. Newspapers and magazines use the simple format to summarize large chunks of information in a friendly manner. Year end issues often expand the technique to create “100 best” or the year’s “ten best”, “top ten”, or “ten smartest” lists. Naturally, many English teachers use this format in their classrooms to express ideas and create discussions.
Sometimes, however, students will simply create a list and avoid providing clear reasons. In order to emphasize the need to share information and exchange insights, I often ask for a “top ten tips” to doing something. This twist also invites a wider range of topics from the practical to more philosophical, and shows respect for students knowledge and interests.
You can ask students for their top ten tips for:
choosing a school?
saving money?
staying healthy and happy?
making and keeping friends?
avoiding boredom and finding satisfaction?
getting good grades?
learning English?
traveling to a new city/country?
Break students into groups of 3-4. Give them 20 minutes to come up their top ten tips on a given topic. Ask them to provide at least one reason and/or example for each answer, and agree on a final order. During the discussions, students will use common phrases like “this is better”, “I disagree”, or “what do you think?”
What does the teacher do? Circle around, listen in, and pass out different colors of chalk for each group. I ask more questions than I answer at this stage. Have each group select a student to write their “top ten tips” on the board.
The instructor goes through the list, asking questions – both soft and hard, and engages student groups. Finally, after the instructor lead discussion, the entire class votes on the top ten tips. This democratic element takes only a few minutes, and encourages more student participation.
This flexible, communicative activity can be constantly used to create engaging, lively classroom conversations. Students enjoy sharing information, telling stories, and helping each other make sense of an often strange land where people speak a strange language. By giving students a chance to offer advice, you also get to learn as you teach!
Ask more. Know more. Share more. Create Compelling Conversations. Visit www.compellingconversations.com
The art of conversation, once considered the sign of a civilized individual, seems less common today.Yet I treasure the moments of sharing experiences, collecting news, and exchanging ideas.I make a point of knowing my neighbors, allowing casual greetings to become long conversations, and making time to explore the feelings and perceptions of friends and relatives in depth. These natural conversations provide information, encouragement, laughs, and pleasure.
Life today often seems very hectic. Who has time for long lunches and civilized conversations? Yet accepting this notion cheats us and denies our responsibility for our choices. We can choose to watch television programs, play computer games, or listen to the radio rather than talk to relatives and friends.It’s a choice.
The internet, a modern wonder, provides another way to find ideas, explore possibilities, and connect with friends. Many find surfing the internet easier, even better than having actual conversations. Sometimes international students also feel too shy to speak to the people next to them. Many Americans, it seems to me, have forgotten how to hold good, deep conversations, or even a friendly chat on the phone.I suspect this lack of real communication lessens their daily joy.
Of course, adult students, immigrant workers, and other people learning English as a second, third, or fourth language face even more barriers to a satisfying conversation in English. First, English remains a confusing, difficult, and strange language. It’s easy to feel uncomfortable when speaking in this new tongue.
What questions do I ask? How can I keep a conversation going? What vocabulary words are needed? How do I show agreement, or disagreement, in a lively, yet polite way? How can I share my experiences in a clear manner? How can I have better, more engaging conversations in English?
Compelling Conversations: Questions and Quotations on Timeless Topicsaddresses these issues for both native and non-native speakers. The focus is on learning by doing, and making good mistakes. (Good mistakes, by the way, are natural mistakes that help us learn so we can make different and better “good mistakes” next time.)Each of the 45 chapters includes 30 or more questions, 10 or more targeted vocabulary words, a few proverbs, and 10 or more quotations. Although designed for advanced students, intermediate ESL students will find plenty of material to use and can benefit from exposure to the new words, phrases, and questions.
Each chapter focuses on a promising conversation topic. The questions allow the reader to practice exchanging experiences and ideas in a natural style. You can add questions, skip questions, and move on to related topics. Each chapter begins with easier questions and moves on to questions that are more abstract.
Both native English speakers and English language learners will find the questions allow one to share experiences, exchange insights, and reflect on life. The questions are conversation starters, and not scripts to follow. The goal remains to create a real dialogue, increase your understanding of your classmates, and gently push you toward using a richer vocabulary in your English conversations. Further, the engaging material allows ESL students to recycle material and use the questions outside of English language classrooms. Students learn by doing, and discover they can create compelling conversations in English!
Can you recommend a good movie? What’s your favorite song? What’s your favorite color? How do you prepare for a test? How do you relax? Do you have a favorite English word?
Can you turn a bureaucratic requirement into a communication tool to express personal ideas and build classroom community? Absolutely.
Taking attendance remains a vital part of our teaching duties. Some schools even require student signatures to prevent fraud and inflated student numbers or covering for weak students. When faced with this situation years ago, I started adding simple questions to the attendance sheets. What’s your favorite month? What’s your favorite sports team? What are you grateful for? How will you revise your last paper to make it better?
Students appreciate the opportunity to express their ideas and perceptions, and learn more about their classmates. The questions also help build a better classroom atmosphere and provide ice-breakers for students to talk with each other during break. Finally, this extra line turns a boring procedure into an educational tool that works for administrators, teachers, and students. What’s not to like?
As an old American TV commercial used to say, “try it – you’ll like it.”
Visit my website www.compellingconversations.com for free conversation materials, teaching tips for ESL/EFL classrooms, and links to excellent websites to learn English.
