The Emperor's Club

"We, teachers, can't give up our "mission" when we fail with some students. We have to focus on the whole not on one student we have failed with. We aren't perfect persons ( like everybody) but , we can learn with our failures and we can become better teachers with our mistakes. We just have to learn with them".

Immersions:


"It was a great way to keep in touch with English and make friends. I loved it! "

Working writing and oral skills...

Leila's task





This activity is suitable for teenagers and/or false begginers.

"My father was born in Iowa and lived there all his life,buteveryyear heused to get a mad incontrable desireto go out of state and go on vacation including my mother,my sister and I.Every year it was the same.Every year it was awful.

We used to drive miles with nothing to see out of the window except fields.American highways used to be full of advertising and often some coming atraction, like the magic words.VISIT SPOOK CAVERNS! OKLAHOMA GREAT FAMILY ATRACTION! JUST 69 MILES! As soon as we saw one like this we children would begin suggesting that we stop and have a look.

My father always said the same:'No,because it's too expensive.'A few miles later he changed and said 'All rjght. We'll go'. He always said: 'yes' in the end.

When we found the Spook Caverns we had an enormous disappointment. The only possible compensation was to buy a plastic dinossaurs in the gift shop."

Adapted from Bill Bryson's travel book, The Lost Continent.



Structions for the activity:




STEP 01: Ask the students: Did yoou use to go on holidays with your family?/Did you use to enjoy it? / Do you still go?

STEP 02: Show them some photos about the text.Ask them what they think had happened.

STEP 03: Read and discuss about it.

STEP 04: Ask them to underline the words they don't know and guess the meaning from the context.Check it in the dictionary.

STEP 05: Write a letter to a friend.Tell him/her about your worst holiday.

"To teach is to learn twice".

(Isocrates)

Teaching vocabulary

Alessandra's task:





How to teach vocabulary!!!!

It was proposed us to discuss about vocabulary. In first place, we had to put it down on the paper: How we can work with this theme and then, we had to read an article about it.

After that, I realised that we had the same ideas for this theme like Jeremy Harmer.Both of us agree that, the student needs to learn it through music,games and especcialy, from reading and listening activities.

Students can also make a list of their favourite words. This types of activities can encourage our students to take the words for themselves and make friends with English. But we have to be careful with words meaning because one word can have more tahn one meaning depending on the context.

To solve this, students can use monolingual dictionaries, they contain examples of wordsbeing used in phrases and they have information about all the aspects of words.

Therefore, the main skill for foreign language students is their ability to record the news words.They learn in an organised way. They can organise them in cathegories: (family, clothes,etc).

Anyway, we have to use strategies (such as games,dialogues,word maps, etc) to help our students to build their own vocabulary.

Let´s teach slangs!!!!!

Bia's task:

Structures:

Step 01:
The teacher asks their students about main slangs on their own language and and he/she puts it on the board. Then,the teacher can write the slangs in English like examples. After, they can read these slangs together with their teacher.

Step 02:
The teacher is going to give cards to their students. They have to find a partner that has a word or expression that they can form a slang together .After, the partners say what they think it means.
Then, the teacher check if they form correct slangs. Everybody repeat it and the teacher says the mean of it in their own language.

"Students want and need to learn slang and one of most efficient and effective ways we can help them do this is by means of pratical,interesting and fun activities which build confidence, self-esteem and language competence."

(New Routes-October 2005)

"Tell me and I´ll forget: show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."

(Chinese proverb)