Last Monday I observed my first class at CIES. I went to the Group 2A Speaking class, taught by Andrew Wilson. However, Andrew was out sick that day and Vicky Golen was his substitute instead. Instead of going through whatever normal lesson Andrew had planned for the day, Vicky used what she referred to as an ELP, or Emergency Lesson Plan. Basically it was just a premade backup lesson for a situation just like this one. The class began with 3 2-minute group discussions on a variety of topics. The first was arranged marriage, the second divorce, and the third was whether or not students think smoking should be allowed. It was interesting to watch this part because the students all came from different backgrounds, and their responses to each topic were so diverse! It was also a good exercise because it encouraged students to talk about issues that they may come across in real life, and it encouraged natural dialogue instead of something structured specifically for the classroom.
For the next part of class, Vicky asked the students to recall their recent vocabulary words and their meanings, and wrote each word on the board. Then she handed out a short passage on the topic of smoking bans, and read it aloud with the class. She answered students' questions about content and vocabulary, and then moved on to a video about the same issue. She played the video twice and asked students to take notes on the opinions of characters in the video. Then she assigned groups of students to write a short speech arguing either for or against smoking bans, based on the characters' opinions. While groups were discussing this, Vicky walked around the room encouraging conversation and clarifying and confusion.
Class ended before the groups could share their speeches, but for an emergency lesson, it was a very thorough one! I really liked how she incorporated both reading and listening into the lesson as well, because in real life dialogue and conversation are often in response to some of these things.
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