Another hot and happening summer day at Smith’s School of English!
My first lesson of the evening was two pre-intermediate students with two very different personalities. One was just winding down from holiday mode, while the other was just beginning to wind up. They were both interested in various summer festivals, so we chatted about the various ones they had and would be attending, creating a feeling of commonality and cheer in the classroom.
I was planning to simply review a routine by writing up the L shape on the board for hints, dictating the questions, and having the students asking and answering one another the question. However it was soon apparent that they would mutually benefit from going through the whole routine with listening and repeating. Review is always a good thing, and this version of events seemed to make them both quite happy. If nothing else, they were very pleased in the end when they were able to repeat the whole story without grammatical mistakes.
After this we launched into a phrasal verbs lesson where I provided a set of photo cards each, depicting various stages of preparing a meal. I asked them to organize the stages, which is actually more difficult than you’d think! I suppose people don’t really break down food preparation activities into visual phases very often. This was something else that made the lesson a little more fun, though. I was happy with the amount of phrasal verbs that were able to be used off the top of their heads for these cooking instructions, as well as the simple present verb form to express the idea that the action is repeated, or usual, for example: “I boil the water”. Something I also didn’t fail to notice was the quick application of the freshly learnt routine phrase “for a few minutes” in a different context the to say “wait for a few minutes” in the cup noodle preparation. Certain joy, or satisfaction, was furthermore to be gained from the phrase “put together the sandwich with coordinated bread-meeting hand actions.
To round off the lesson I mimed having a stomach-ache and feeling generally ill from food poisoning of a badly put together sandwich. How do I feel? Yes, I feel sick…. Or, “I don’t feel well”.
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