alice’s posterous

This week, in Spanish, we worked on a conversation between a mum and his son about his new girlfriend. The mum wants to know about his son's new girlfriend and keeps asking him how she looks like (description vocabulary: hair, eyes, size...). And of course, the son doesn't want to say much to her mum. This conversation can be found on Gente Joven 1, a great Spanish textbook I mentioned in an earlier post.

First students listened to the conversation and answered questions about it. Then I gave them some key phrases and expressions from the conversation. Some key expressions applied to the mum "A ver, ¡cuentame!" "¿Como es?", "¿Es guapa?"..., others applied to the son "¡Pero mama!", "si, es muy, muy guapa", "Es morena, alta y delgada"...
Students worked in pairs and had to say the phrases with the correct pronunciation and gestures. I let them repeat and repeat the phrases to really get into their roles and pretend they were Spanish people (very loud and with lots of gestures!). Despite the fact the task was quite repetitive, the students really enjoyed repeating the phrases with the correct pronunciation.

Finally, once they got into their roles, I asked students to prepare their own conversations using some of the phrases they repeated as well I using their own. I told them they were going to be recorded and marked on their pronunciation, fluency and the correct use of feminine and masculine words. Students really got engaged and worked hard to prepare and rehearse their presentations.

The following lesson, I recorded students' conversations. Whilst, they were being recorded the other groups would mark them on pronunciation, fluency and the correct use of feminine and masculine words. At the end of each recording, we would discuss the performance. I noticed students would always remain positive in their comments but would also be sharp on incorrect sentences
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I was extremely pleased with students' performances and I could really see they enjoyed doing the task. I posted their recordings on the school blog and I have asked them to post some comments.

What about you? have you experienced a fun and engaging speaking task?

Last week, I was outraged when I read some comments on a TES forum about Twitter. Obviously, they were comments made by people who have no idea of what Twitter is about but still they have the need to criticize it.

When my brother (@chewie33 on Twitter) told me about Twitter last summer, I thought "what's the point in writing what you're having for breakfast?!". I didn't know much about social networking. I had just registered on Facebook and I quite liked it because I was getting in touch with old friends I had lost contact with. But that was all and I thought Twitter was completely pointless. Nevertheless, I carried on and started sharing more useful information in relation with my job and other areas of interest to me. I also started blogging on Posterous and then I started to meet new interesting people.

For me Twitter is as @langwitches describes it in her fantastic post about a traditional Argentinean Asado (BBQ) and Social Networking in the 21st century. It is like having a conversation with lots of different people at a party. Yesterday, I was having a leaving do at my house with a big barbecue and my friends and family and it was like being on Twitter and having different conversations about different topics. At times, I would be quiet and listening, at other times, I would be participating, I would leave a conversation and follow another one. Sometimes, the conversation would be pointless (i.e. about what we're having for breakfast! because we are humans), sometimes it would be meaningful.

Thanks to Twitter, I have met a bunch of great people from all over the world and I have learnt so much from them. My teaching job has become so much fun and exciting because I am always keen to try out the new things I learn on Twitter. So please, stop criticizing and start giving Twitter a go!

And you? what do you compare Twitter with?

Recently, I found this cool resource on TES thanks to ceanna.

It is a PowerPoint with slides showing a comic strip about a conversation between two people ordering in a restaurant.

The comic strip was created using Toondoo, a free web 2.0 tool which allows you to create comic strips, to publish and share them. It is fairly simple to use and it is a welcome change from the usual PowerPoint. You could also use it in the computer room where students create their own role-plays or describe their routine in the day.

What do you think? Have you used Toondoo already?