Thursday, September 13, 2012

The Amazing Field Trip: Practicing English in the Real World


It’s that time of year again... students are heading back to classes and language educators are hard at work with teaching, grading, and mentoring. But one thing that most everyone looks forward to is the long-awaited class field trip!

Language programs tend to offer students with various opportunities to apply what they learn in the classroom to the “real world”, learning how to accomplish daily tasks with their English knowledge. Field trips offer language learners a chance to engage in authentic dialogues and practice listening skills, not to mention explore beautiful and sometimes exotic locations. 

As fun as field trips are, it is important to keep in mind that skipping a day of class is not meant to just relax and skip a day of learning English. There is no doubt that students will talk to each other in their native language when they are outside the classroom, or just out of hearing range of the teacher. In contrast, a school day outside is a lesson to be learned in the “real” classroom. 

Here are several ways to make sure that students practice their English while having a good time:

1.  Order Food in English
Being outside is a great opportunity for students to practice ordering food in English. Not only do they have to know the correct question format (ex: Can I please have…, I want to get…), but they are encouraged to practice their pronunciation of tricky food names. Or at the very least, they can say a meal number or point to a delicious-looking picture!

2.  Pay in Cash
Students can pay with cash to learn how to distinguish bills, coins, size, and color. They can practice listening to the cashier mention the total amount of their meal, and in a sense practice reading by counting out the correct currency. Students can also use this great opportunity to say aloud the total amount in terms of ‘dollars’ and ‘cents’ to practice numbers.

3. Scavenger Hunt
This type of activity works extremely well in museums, or any activities that take place indoors. Teachers must first figure out a general theme of the location and provide things for the students to find. A few months ago, my co-teachers and I took our students to an Egyptian Museum. They were set with a task to take pictures (using either cameras or iPhones) of subjects/items related to mummies, old weapons, Egyptian clothing, and so on.

For a follow-up lesson, the students created a slide show of the things they found to be interesting, colorful, scary, ancient, etc. and presented them to the class. With a scavenger hunt, the students end up doing all the work but also have the most fun! Additional questions could include: What was your favorite part of the field trip? What was not so pleasant?

4.  Giving Directions
This activity is actually a test of navigation skills. Depending on how many teachers are on the field trip, students will be split into small groups, with one teacher for each group (to avoid the possibility of getting lost in an unfamiliar area!). Each group will have a map of the general area (produced from Google Maps or hand-drawn by an artistic teacher, for example). Half the groups will meet at Location A. The other half will meet at Location B. They must walk on foot and find Location C as a team, speaking in English and using direction terms, body language (i.e. pointing), and lots of negotiation! The first groups to reach Location C are the “winners”.  You can even create this task to resemble a scene from The Amazing Race, with short tasks given throughout. Teamwork will eventually lead the students to victory.  :)


It is true that field trips should be exciting and memorable. These are the special times when most students form tight bonds with their classmates by joking around, enjoying the scenery, and just having fun. However, it is essential to remind students that the only way to improve their language skills, maybe slowly but steadily, is to practice English in any situation possible. After all, the world is a playground, and practice makes perfect!

Friday, September 7, 2012

Stay Informed with Breaking News English


What is Neil Armstrong famous for? How much food do Americans waste? What is the danger of global warming?  These are the tough questions that can be answered by reading the most recent articles posted on BreakingNewsEnglish.com, a superbly thorough and meaningful resource site for language educators. The concept of this website is simple enough: Current events from around the world are written in plain English, with no unnecessary news jargon that requires you to look up every other word in the dictionary. Half a page of news worthy material is strategically condensed to a maximum of two paragraphs, keeping the meaning and interesting facts in the reading passage. 

Not only does the website creator Sean Banville do an excellent job with the news articles, he provides an extensive lesson plan (enough for about 2 hours+ of class!) for each article. The extra activities help the students actively engage with the written material, not only by absorbing information but also by sharing opinions. This may be a good time to say that the news content is most appropriate for students in the High Intermediate to Advanced class levels.

Despite the abundance of a variety of news articles that discuss different events, the lesson plans always follow a similar structured format to keep things organized and facilitates easy learning habits. I would like to break down each section of the lesson plan and share my thoughts about how each part can be used effectively in the language classroom.


Warm-Ups
This section consists of many good ideas for encouraging the students to work in pairs. Some ideas include discussions about the most interesting and boring words/concepts in the article, completing a table about the subject (ex: sharing opinions),  debating about beliefs, ranking concepts from best to worst, and writing word associations. All these activities promote active thinking and clear expressions of opinions, but it may be best to choose just one or two to get the ball rolling.

Before Reading/Listening
This section includes questions to show what the students already know prior to reading or listening to the article. This includes True/False statements, synonym match (similar meanings of words), and phrase match. These can be used as small group or pair work activities, and answers can be discussed as a whole class.

While Reading/Listening
Creating English sentences is like a jigsaw puzzle. Words that correspond to different parts of speech must fall into the correct place in the sentence: nouns come after articles, adjectives come before nouns, and so on.  One activity in this section is the Gap Fill: students must fill in each blank with one correct word that they can choose from a word list on the side. This exercise tests logical reading skills. Another activity in this section is for students to fill in each blank with the word they hear, given the context of the story. The teacher (or an advanced student) can be chosen to dictate the script. 

After Reading/Listening
It is important to follow any reading activity with review activities to ensure understanding and comprehension. This section offers several different ways to review the reading, including a word search (finding collocations to the given words), article questions, vocabulary (circling and discussing unclear words), and testing each other with word meanings.

Survey
Students have a chance to interview their fellow classmates with three questions that they create relating to the topic. When everyone is finished, the teacher can call on some students to share their answers. 

Discussion
This is my favorite activity in the lesson plan for pair discussions. Student A gets a set of 10 questions relating to the subject matter, and interviews Student B.  After Student B answers the questions, he/she will ask the other 10 questions to Student A.  After all students are finished, the teacher can select a few questions to prompt a comprehensive class discussion.

Language – Multiple Choice
This section allows students to choose the correct fill-in-the-blank answer from the given four choices. This can be used as a pre-reading activity or post-reading (comprehension) activity.

Writing
This section allows students to write freely for 10 (or more) minutes about the given topic. After writing, students can exchange papers for peer editing .

Homework
Some homework ideas provided in the lesson plans include searching for more information about the topic on the Internet, making a poster to display the findings, and writing a magazine article about interesting facts. It is up to the teacher to decide what homework activities work best for the class.


At the end of each lesson plan, you will find the correct answers for the various reading comprehension activities.  Perhaps the best thing about these activities is that they are adaptable to student level, student interest, and class time. Unless you plan to devote the entire class session on the news and current events, it is possible you will not use everything. It is helpful to pick and choose what your students need the most help on, what kind of activities you want them to practice (ex: reading, listening, vocabulary acquisition, sharing opinions, etc.), and what will grab the students’ attention.

Reading about current events and engaging in discussion is now more exciting and meaningful. Go ahead and check out the breaking news!