On Communication

[woza17]

Thanks AJ.
I love those earnest little guys. even the rest of the class thought this was a totally boring idea but tried to support young Bob when I asked him why he wanted to see this awfully long building. The other student said it's because he used to be a teacher. No, said Bob it's not that. It just gives me a special feeling you would have to see it for yourself to know what I mean.
So I did give in and said we could visit the building for 10 minutes and take a maxinum of 5 photos.

[joe]

I find students getting hung up on words a lot. I guess they have the thought lined up in Chinese and have most of it translated into English and then that word stalls them. (Or maybe a word in a structure they don't recognise.) A student once even admitted something like as much -- one word she didn't know in a sentence she did know meant she didn't know what I was saying.

There's a game called Taboo. Students have to make us guess their secret word by telling us the meaning, but they have a list of words they are NOT allowed to use to give the meaning. For eg,

secret word: hat
taboo words: head, wear, cold

Higher levels, more taboo words.

It calls for the gentle art of bullpooting your way through to a target. And also listening to what people call out at you.

[joe]

Ahem, is this thing on...?


Objective: educate, remediate, rehearse, review

Obstacles: opposed motivations (exam study versus practice toward proficiency); opposed expectations (teacher-centred lecture style versus interactive dialogue); widely varying skill levels; fatigue

Answer: ...

I had in a burst of enthusiasm supposed the answer to be "entertain, engage -- via novelty and recognisable success in progress." I supposed a structured curriculum where baselines were taken and used to guide language content, and where initial lessons introduced some communicative methods slowly and were bulwarked by reassuring lecturing. I had supposed that it may even be possible to plan lessons of sufficient variety that the students would not be able to second guess lesson structure and lose interest.


Hey, look! A wheel.

[Mr Nobody]

Sorry, Woza, the E word means "on the spot" (literally means "out of the moment" but 'on the spot is better' idiom. My bad. I always try to use a big word even when a diminuitive one is available.)

Oh, my guys are college english majors, so maybe are up to more of this than, say, school kids.

[George61]

"off the cuff" ??

[gengrant]

"on the fly?"

"off the top of yer head?"

"as you go?"

"ad-lib?"

[Crippler]

spontaneous, flying by the seat of your pants, engaging mouth before putting brain in gear!

[con's fly is open]

From the hip. Pulled out of the air/your ass.