2nd Practice (Advance)

My second practice with the group was another positive experience. This time, I started off with some non-biblical proverbs as a warm-up. They even learned a new word from one of those. A student shared her opinion on one of the proverbs. 

I continued the class by having listening activities. I liked one  that I had not tried before. Students underlined the best option out of 2 possible before listening to the right answer. Students got all answers right but one, which was also a new term for them. I thought it was nice the exercise contained some  informal words like "loaded", meaning having plenty of money.


The main part of the class was a grammar introduction to real and unreal conditionals. I provided "formula" structures to support the explanations. I included some example sentences on the board. I would ask them to help me complete some of them. The most common contexts to use those conditionals were shown.


I was able to answer or clarify their doubts and questions. When I was done teaching the topic, they found common patterns in conditional clauses. Students then worked on a few exercises and more new words were added to the vocabulary section. Pronunciation, examples, synonyms and possible uses in common speech were taught. It felt good when I noticed that they did remember the meaning of "splash out", which had been seen in the previous class, and came up again in one text.

1st Practice of the semester

My first practice with the advanced group went fairly well. As a warm-up, I had them puzzle over a few riddles. They seemed to be interested in guessing the answers. The idea worked as expected. The class focus was on "reported speech". I wrote some example sentences on the board, and explained the difference it had in relation to direct speech. Underlining the structure and tense changes was helpful. I also answered their questions.

Then, the main activity was a reading exercise. They got in pairs and read an article. I gave them some time, and before moving on to the exercise, I asked if they had spotted any new words from the reading. They did told me about a couple of new terms. So, I wrote the meaning on the board, gave the pronunciation and provided examples. 


In an effort to engage them actively in solving the exercise, I prompted them to work with a partner and asked them for help by giving me oral responses. They worked and participated effectively in the activity. In addition, I added a vocabulary section on the board to write some key terms from the lesson. The words were related and they even told me which were the similarities among the words. 


To finish up the class, I asked some trivia questions related to the reading. Some of them gave their opinions to the rest of the group and some answers were even humorous, so the class ended in a lightened mood.