Conversation topics

The best way for someone to learn anything is by practicing - learning languages is surely not the exception, but rather a bodily personification of this. In my six years of experience teaching English as a foreign language, one of the really important things I learned is to let your students talk. 

This can be particularly difficult in classes in which you have 0% enthusiasm -usually the case whenever you have teenagers - or if you are the one doing all the talking (yeah, I know there are plenty of us overenthusiasts, and often overdoers). I hate to break it to you, but you are like that overly-caring, overly-protective parent who only manages to scare their kids away - Sorry!

To really help your students - whether they are 5 or 99 year-olds - I encourage you to take a deep breath, exhale... And bite your tongue until your students talk(!). Don't force them to talk, throw bait at them and slowly pull them towards the conversation until bam! - they have no way out and are trapped  - mwahahaha (clarification: evil laugh).

Here I have written a list of topics. I will be constantly updating the list as I find interesting and useful conversation- stirring topics. Remember to [gracefully, as to not be noticed] insert devil's advocate comments or questions to keep the conversation flowing. 

1. Conversation Topic # 1 - Minimalistic lifestyle.

- Tell your students roughly what it is (don't want to kill their imagination)

"Something that is very simple and has few decorations"  (sound too simple? Read my blog post #1 tilted K.I.S.S. It!)

- Give them/ draw an example

It can refer to a house or your wardrobe - meaning, a house with simple decoration, a wardrobe with only the things you really need 

- Let them talk

- "Bait": 

An article about it: Just type "minimalism" into your favorite search engine. Here is one interesting article I might have chosen to give my students. It is written by the self-proclaimed minimalists - "the minimalists" (I bet you never would have guessed their name)

A quote:

2. Conversation Topic # 2 - 

(Coming soon...)

One last tip: if the conversation dies, put the pressure on them - not on yourself. Tell them that each person will have to stand in front of class and give a summary of what minimalism is for 30 seconds - timed with a stop watch (or your cellphone) and without any pauses! :-) have fun!

Reviewing with Jenga

Jenga is a game many people like, and so it' s the perfect activity to use for Review. 

The rules are of course the same, you just tape numbers on all the Jenga pieces corresponding to a question written either on the board or on a separate sheet of paper (for best results, write questions beforehand). You can use this to review any topic and, to add extra learning opportunity, if they answer incorrect, they will have to copy this question and answer on their notebooks for homework. 

Not much more to it :-)