ELT in Brazil

Here’s an interesting activity I tried with some of my students (A2 – C1) this week that led to a lot of work on emergent language and a couple of laughs too.

Ask students to think about their last week (works best on the first class of the week) and take notes of:

Something new 

Something old 

Something fun

Something odd

For example, students can take notes of a new hobby, an old hobby, a fun get-together with friends, and something awkward that happened to them.

When they are done with their notes, tell them they are supposed to talk about their week and mention all of these in no specific order and in a way that doesn’t explicitly mention the categories new – old – fun – odd. Their peers are supposed to listen and try to guess the order in which they chose to talk about things: old – fun – odd – new? fun – new – old – odd?

Repeat so every student talks about their week and they all guess the order of activities from their peers. Allow students some time to comment, ask follow-up questions, and interact naturally.

Give specific feedback to each student and focus not only on mistakes, but also on instances where the language could be improved, either in terms of sophistication, collocation, fluency, or pronunciation, and also instances where the language was used correctly or in an interesting, not-run-of-the-mill way.