ELT in Brazil

This lesson comes right after TBL Lesson #8, if you haven’t read that post I suggest you do so you know where we’re coming from!

As mentioned previously, this lesson is supposed to be the first one in a new unit of learning for this task-based learning course for a pair of A1 students who are taking classes for no specific reason at this point – they just want to learn the language so they can use it in the future when the need arises.

I did not prepare any tasks for this lesson as it was the first one of the new learning unit. I wanted to give students the chance to show me a topic that interests them and that would be within their zone of proximal development (Merci, Vygotsky!). I began the lesson by asking students how they were and what they had done the day before and earlier on that day. And that’s when I saw it!

One of the students mentioned she went to the supermarket to buy some fruit and vegetables and some chicken for dinner. I asked the other student “What do you always buy when you go to the supermarket?” and we worked on some emergent language. I elicited some items we can buy in the supermarket and drew a small mindmap with some words they provided and others they asked me to translate.

Then, I asked both students to study the mindmap for two minutes while I designed this table (click!).

When the time was up, I had finished the table and made a copy for each student. I told them I was going to tell them about the last time I went to the supermarket and that they were supposed to write down whether I bought the items in the list and how much/many of each I got. I opened the chart and used it to talk about what I bought the last time I went shopping (live-listening activity). While I talked, I was also recording what I was saying in the form of a WhatsApp audio message to be sent to the students. I talked for a couple of minutes and, when I was done, I asked students to compare their answers. They did so and said they hadn’t got all the answers and that they would like another shot at it. I told students they could hear the audio again by checking the recording in our WhatsApp group. I told them they could listen to it as many times as they wanted and pause and rewind as many times as needed.

Students spent around 5 minutes to be ready. When they returned, I asked them to check their answers one last time with each other and then we checked it together. I gave them some feedback on their interaction and that was the end of the lesson.

For our next class, I would like to focus a bit more on output. I think a closed, output-focused task would fit well as a sequence to this lesson.