Bob’s Blog

I observed another foreign language teacher’s (sophomore) oral English class today.

Well actually 1.5 classes (sat in for the first half of a second class, doing my introduction thing). The teacher suggested it would be a good idea for me to ask everyone to ask

me a question as part of my introduction.

After doing my 45 second intro, I instructed the students to write down a question to ask me, after which going down the list of students calling them one by one to ask me their question.

The most asked questions (guess either no one was paying attention when these questions were asked by the previous student(s), or they just didn’t understand my answers) were:
- What are you hobbie

s?
- What was your study in college?/What were you doing before

you came here?
- Why are you here

?

For the first question, Im not sure they knew what SCUBA Diving & Kiteboarding are, its not like they are common English words - I’ll have to remember to bring in magazines to illustrate what they are next time I do this.

For the second question, Im not sure they understood the title of my major; “Telecommunications & Networking” & my last job in “I.T./Information Technology”…next time I think I’ll just say I was in Computer Science & “worked with computers” as my answers for the next time around :-D. For the third question, I guess they were paying attention, as they asked it in different ways…ie: in ways of the job now, not really matching what I was doing before, how’d I pick the city/campus (told them I picked it, because it looked nice :-p), etc….

Introductions took around 30 mins, the teacher seemed happy – less class for him to teach :-D. In this class, the teacher had the students stand up when speaking & often asked them complicated questions.

This seems like a good way to reinforce English speaking skills, but wonder if my first year students will be able to handle it…. maybe I’ll wean them onto it in the second semester :-).

Well anyway, two teachers down, one more to go….