Communicative Learning Starts Here!

Wednesday 3, 2008

Today we started the class with a discussion activity; we just had a great time chatting and exchanging opinions since the topic was intriguing. It was about ranting about something we hated. The teacher and I gave examples of ranting we both had, then we assigned them to complete the exercises after the read on the topic. Later on, we asked them one-on-one to share their ranting experiences with the class. There were many interesting stories of their house mates and other interesting things. Since many of them live in a home stay and a share house, they have encountered some interesting cases. We, as the whole class, tried to help one another to find the best solution for each case. We really had a great class. Then, we moved on to the next reading activity. This time we talked about Nicole Kidman’s biography. This exercise helped them identify the main idea of a paragraph.

Before lunch time, we introduced them to grammar points. We discussed Future Perfect and Future Continuous. I had to say that the tenses were a bit difficult for some of them to grasp since, in some languages, there are no such tenses. Thai language,as well as other Asian languages, certainly does not possess tenses. Instead, we have a time line where verbs are not inflected. Thus, the teacher and I gave more examples and drilled them with the students one-by-one after they finished completing exercises.

In the afternoon, we had a Computer Lab hour, so students were given web-sites to choose from to work on according to their interests. The choices are www.abc.net.au (TV programs with exercises for students), www.news.com.au (News on TV with exercises) and www.cnn.com/world (News and other things around the world with exercises). While the students were watching, the teacher and I observed and walked around the room to ask them what they were watching. This way there would be less cheating with chatting online or doing other things.

However, what I would have done differently was I would have reviewed the sites and prepared a sheet of exercises such as a cloze reading for them to complete. Keeping in mind, after having to absorb and register those grammar points, the teacher might think that it was better the way it was. We would like students to have fun and enjoy learning too. The dynamic,communicative oriented classroom happened here and I really enjoyed it so much!