As an English teacher Halloween is one of my favourite events. Not because I particularly enjoy wearing costumes (I don’t think I’ve worn one in the past 10 years), but because I love using TV series in my lessons. There are some great Halloween episodes around and these are two of my favourites, one to be used with adolescent groups and another with adults.
Month: October 2015
Error correction in one-to-one lessons
Error correction is something I have been thinking a lot about recently. This was partly motivated by Luiz Otávios plenary (which I wrote about here), but also because I have been observing lessons every week as a Celta tutor in training.
I have previously written about error correction in conversation lessons here and more in general here, so today I’m going to tackle it from the perspective of one-to-one lessons.
Bachelor and Bachelorette parties: a conversation lesson for adults
One of my adult students is throwing a Bachelorette’s party to her friend, so I thought it would be interested to discuss the differences and similarities between Brazil and the USA.
I’d say this lesson is for adults only and, if you are working with a group, it helps if people are married.
Emojis you shouldn’t live without
Earlier this year my friend (and former student) Isabella Ferraro shared a lesson with me she had taught to her adolescent students. I thought it was interesting, but at the time couldn’t quite find a group to use it with. Now recently I was organizing the files on my computer and came across Isabella’s lesson again.
This time around, however, I had two students that I thought would be perfect to discuss emojis with. This is what came out of it.
Speeding in Finland: a conversation lesson for adults.
Two of my private students may move to Finland next year. Because of that I’ve been keeping an eye open for interesting stories about Finnish people or that talk about Finland. A couple of weeks ago I found one that is general enough to be used with other adult students as well.
It turns out that in Finland speeding fines are calculated according to people’s income, which can lead to some pretty unbelievable amounts being paid. I thought this would lead to some interesting discussions and based a lesson around it.
ricardo barros elt 