Nog and I are starting up some intensive English classes.
There will be full-day and half-day weekend classes offered. The full-day one includes breakfast and lunch and a trip to the cinema to watch a film in English. The half-days will be mostly the same, without lunch and a film.
I did a full-day intensive class a couple of years ago with four students – all professionals who didn’t have time during the week to take classes but they could commit to one day a month. It was fabulous and we had a lot of fun with it. Of course these people already have a rather high level of English, but the idea is that they can spend a day practicing and communicating to maintain their level. Kind of like spending a day in London (or wherever) without the extra expense of having to go there.
No grammar is taught at this class. It is focussed on conversation, vocabulary, communication and pronunciation, which takes place around various activities: discussions, games, songs, etc.
Some of the activities/games we have planned are:
- scrabble
- pictionary
- trivial pursuit
- boggle (thanks PC!)
- charades
- round-robin storytelling
- songs
- reading & discussing news articles
So we were just wondering if any of you could give us some more ideas about what might be a fun and challenging activity to include. The half-day courses are also offered to students with an intermediate level (they couldn’t deal with a full-day thing) so we’re also looking for stuff that would be good for people at this level.
casa azahar 
Two game possibilities:
1) Word Yahtzee – Its a game on similar lines to boggle, so may be worth considering.
2) The type of party game (it must have a name but can I think of it? 😕 )where you all write down the names of 10 well known people on slips. These go into a pool, and everybody picks one. This is then displayed somehow (on the forehead if you use Post-its) so that everyone else can see who you are.
Object – find out who you are using questions which can only be answered yes or no (or maybe).
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Upwords: a crossword/Scrabble type game where you can change words by placing a letter on top of letters in words that already are on the board.
Of course Scrabble. Is there any other game?
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Johnny, your party game suggestion reminds me of an old Canadian television quiz panel show (can any Canadians help me out with the name?) which had ‘mystery’ guests who had recently been in the news.
The guests remained hidden from view and sometimes even had their voices electronically changed (if their voices were well-known) while the panel asked yes/no questions. I think there were four panel members and they were allowed five questions each. They had to not only guess the identity of the mystery guest but also the news story. Great idea – thanks!
I’ve never seen Word Yahtzee, will check it out. And I think instead of Upwards I’d rather just use scrabble, hmh – and no, there isn’t any other game! 😉
Though ideally we could use some more game suggestions like Johnny’s. Stuff that can be played without needing an actual board game and preferably that would only last about half an hour. Unfortunately, scrabble takes much longer (even if we set a timer) and while we might use it now and then, it’s also not quite as ‘interactive’ as other games.
The idea of these classes is that the students get to communicate together (and with us) as much as possible. I’ll be taking note of all the new vocabulary that comes up and later on write it up and send it to the students a day or so later by email.
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Oh, I just remembered the name of the tv programme – Front Page Challenge.
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See http://www.crosswordtools.com/letters-game/ for Countdown. You can play online.
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Word Yahtzee is quite a bit like Boggle. I received a set as a gift in my teens, and still have it. There is another similar game called “Perquackey”, which is much fun.
I’d better get it in gear and send this Boggle set out to you this weekend, az, so you can work it into your curriculum soon.
Two other fun online word games are Bookworm and Bespelled. They’re almost the exact same game. http://zone.msn.com/en/bespelled/
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Thanks everyone! We now have quite a few possible wordgames to use. Can anyone think of any good ‘communication’ games?
For example, Johnny’s suggestion about the ‘yes/no’ question game was good as it will actually get people to use their vocabulary.
I dunno, maybe even some role-play stuff?
This is why we thought the round-robin story-telling would also be good as it is a bit more inter-active than just trying to find words, though the word-games will also be fun if we can keep the entire game down to less than half and hour.
Variety is the key to keeping a four-hour class interesting.
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First four-hour intensive class will be happening this afternoon, in about an hour or so. We just have two students for this one, so I’m not sure how it will go. It works much better with at least four students, more energy and input and all that. But these two students were very keen on having the class today so we’ll see how it goes. Wish us luck! 🙂
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ps
If nothing else it motivated Nog and me to clean the apartment! 😉
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Boy, all that cleaning and nobody even wanted to use the bathroom … 😉
So, it went very well. I served coffee and tea with bikkys when Carmen and Maria arrived and, as they hadn’t met before, there was some getting-to-know-you conversation first, combined with ‘5 random things’ from each person (including me and Nog).
Then we did the 20-questions game (they really liked that one – thanks again, Johnny!). After that we read and discussed a newspaper article together and then had a game of scrabble, which kind of dragged a bit, but it was fine. And we finished off with a song/gap fill, which was quite fun.
And now Nog and I are going to take ourselves out for some well-deserved (and much desired) tapas and vino … 🙂
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We’re going out for tapas, too!
Glad it sent well! It actually does sound like it was quite a lot of fun. Too bad I can’t hire you on as a spanish teacher (the four years of high school and two in college don’t seem to have helped much…)!
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Yes, it was a lot of fun, and the students enjoyed it too.
I was quite knackered by the end of it though.
Slept in late this morning.
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Quite looking forward to trying out Boggle – thanks again, PC! 🙂
I checked out the rules for it this morning and it looks like fun. Also nice that each round only lasts three minutes. Even though the students quite enjoyed playing Scrabble yesterday I felt there was too much ‘dead air’ going on at times. I think the next time we try Scrabble we’ll play in teams, which will encourage more talking and interaction.
Nog is right – it was rather knackering, even though it was also fun. Possibly more for me as I was the ‘MC’ and was responsible for keeping things going.
Four hours is a long time to keep communication going in an interesting and lively manner. Nog once took a month-long intensive Spanish course – four hours each morning. But it also included grammar and reading exercises and they got a half-hour coffee break half-way through, and the teacher also got some ‘time out’ while students were either reading or working on stuff together in pairs.
Luckily I know both of the students who came yesterday. Carmen is a regular student of mine who wanted some extra practice and she quite enjoyed having the chance to talk with other people. Maria has had to leave her regular classes with me for the moment while she works on her Phd, so for her the intensive class is a good way for her to maintain her level until she can come back.
I was quite chuffed though, when Maria told me yesterday that she has three weeks free from her university classes and so wants to take regular classes with me again during that time. Must be doing something right. 😉
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“Must be doing something right.”
I can vouch for that.
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Az is an excellent teacher. As “MC” she keeps the class bubbling – and in a four hour class that’s no mean feat. It’s a long time to keep going. Helps me, too, as I haven’t been teaching so long.
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Well, it was also great to have Nog there as my back-up and also someone for Maria and Carmen to tease when they couldn’t understand a word he was saying … 😉
He has yet to learn to stop using ambivalent English expressions when talking to students with a lower-to-intermediate level of speaking. So it was good for him too. The girls teased him big time and me too. All of us kept looking around like – WHAT did he just say? 🙂
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No probs – another variant is to use a similar pool of names and split the players into two groups.
Then on a timed basis one person draws a name and has to describe the person to their team, no using names etc. Once guessed, draw another name etc.
Next person has their time, draws names etc.
If you want, you can have successive rounds with gradually less time given to each “describer”.
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Just played our first game of boggle (thanks PC). Good fun. Quicker and sharper than scrabble (but az still beat me).
ps enjoyed the tuffy uk cd too. And az is chuffed with the timer.
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Glad you enjoyed the game (and the CD- thought it might be nice for you to actually hear what you wind up hearing so much about). I hope that it works well for the intensive English classes as well as for fun time!
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Yesterday morning I had a special 2-hour recuperation class with one of my upper-intermediate students, Paco. Nog sat in and helped out for part of it, during which time we played 20 questions, which went very well. Paco then told us about the same variation of this game that Johnny mentioned in post 1, coming up with names of famous people and sticking them on their foreheads, etc.
And well – cue weird eeoooeeeoo music – later on we went to see the film Marie Antoinette. And in one scene the royals and their entourage played this as an after-dinner game!
So either Sofia Coppula was taking liberties or this is indeed a very old parlour game.
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