ELT in Brazil

This is a lesson I taught to a pair of students focusing on Business English. Both students work at a multinational company in Brazil and need English to progress in their careers. This lesson comes after TBL Lesson #11 so if you haven’t read that one I suggest you do so you know where we’re coming from!

We began this lesson with a review activity I like to use with learners. You get them to draw a tic-tac-toe grid on their notebooks and fill it with words or expressions they liked from previous lessons. It is important that students are given the chance to choose any word/expression from any of the previous classes for more autonomy and agency.

After students have chosen their words and filled their grids with them you tell them what they’re supposed to do. Students have to talk about what they did last week and manage to include the words in their grids in the conversation as seamlessly as possible. I always give students a minute to look at the words and kind of plan what they are going to say and how. When the time was up, students interacted and used all the words in their grids. I took some notes, we worked on some emergent language and I gave them feedback.

Next, it was time to work on our performance review criteria. I asked students if they had read the criteria and they said they hadn’t had the time. I told students to skim through the 4 sets of criteria, focusing on the rubrics, and take notes on the pros and cons of each set. After some five minutes students returned and were ready for the task. Students had to interact, talk about all sets and decide on the best one to assess their work. They interacted, talked about each set and chose set 1 as the best one. I took some notes, we worked on some emergent language, I gave them feedback and that was the end of the lesson.

For homework, I asked students too meet during the week and craft the perfect assessment criteria using the 4 sets available. They are supposed to pick and choose the rubrics they find relevant and create a set using the rubrics from all sets. Next class, students are going to present their set and justify their choices and write an email to HR suggesting the change for the coming year.

See you next class!