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A3.15 I’m broke
It was my fist time to meet the student today so before jumping right into the one point review I decided to establish trust by asking her what her job was. She answered “I’m …office worker”. OK I thought, a little bit of work will be required getting her to give me a fluid, compact and natural answer. I asked her what she did in the office and she said that she answered the phone and made tea and then I asked her what her company did and she said that it “makes bottles for beer companies such as Suntory” and then I asked her where her office was and she said it was in Minami Morimachi. Ok! Got it! Up on the board I write;
Q What do you do?
A I work as a secretary in a glass bottle manufacturer in Minami Morimachi.
I get her to read her part and she writes it down in her notebook feeling pleased that she can describe her job role concisely.
I then say to her “Do you have a lot of money?” and she quickly answers “I’m broke”. Gosh, if only all the students could produce their one point so quickly I think.
ROUTINE
R7 – The Restaurant
I write the L up on the board and then move straight into the routine (despite her gasp at the length of it on the board). I read through the story, at a slow pace, pointing to the board and making sure that she is following (checking the nods at least). Then I say to her “OK here we go now it’s your turn”. I break the routine down for her back chaining the sentences. She has a few difficulties, especially with the prepositions. At those points I would indicate with a raised eyebrow that something was missing and she was quick to catch on that a preposition was needed. We make it through to the end of the story and the waiter has been tipped well and I hear a sigh of relief and accomplishment from her that it seems to be over. BUT!!!!! On we move to the questions and I get her to write them down in her notebook while I dictate. I then move swiftly on to get her to ask me the questions, which takes all of 1 minute. I then ask her the questions which at first she seems a little surprised by. Actually she did a very good job with answering the questions, only needing a few head jerks to the L on the board to jog her memory.
I wrap it up with a little round of applause and a “good job”, genuinely pleased that she had done well. She also looks pleased to have the pain of intense, controlled study over with and having done what had been asked of her.
ITEM
GIVING ADVICE
I write up on the board the title of the item and underline it to make a clear distinction between this and the routine just done. I throw up on the board ‘You should’ and elicit 3 more (need to, must, have to) and then I give her a few more (ought to, if I were you ). I put this on the board;
v.hot =
v.cold =
v.bad =
v.good =
v.tired =
and ask her to give me the answer with a little prompting by writing down the first letter and finally end up with the strong adjective forms on the board (boiling, freezing, terrible, great, exhausted ). Now time to move onto the cards, which I place on the table already matched and then write on the board the simple dialogue;
A What’s the matter?
B I…………….What should I do?
A ……………………………….
B Great idea, thanks!
We practice a few of the situations (making sure that she uses the ‘terrible’ for the toothache card and the ‘exhausted’ for the sleepy card etc). I also swap the cards over so that we do the conversation twice. We only manage to do 4 of the cards a time is getting a bit slim now (actually it’s 4 mins before the end of class).
ONE POINT
B9 – Just thinking of A makes me B because C.
I rub everything off the board after she has taken down all of her notes and then say that it’s one point time. As time is running out I decide to put the one point straight up and I give her an example of my own. I then ask her to think of her own which she can come up with after just a couple of seconds.
Just a minute so I squeeze in a quickie about where she lives and she says that she lives in Minami Morimachi. Wow! So you work and live in the same area I say and she says that it’s 5 minutes. Lucky her I say and with that I wish her a good week and the lesson (a packed one at that!) comes to an end.
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