Poster for Small Talk
Living in Japan my one of my big problems is getting students to talk to each other rather than to the teacher. Things here tend to be rather teacher centered. I found one way to do it. I made a poster with common small talk questions on it. Things like "How was work today?" or "Did you have a good day at school?". At the start of each class I just pointed at the poster and left the room for 5 minutes. I stayed in the doorway to listened and the reults were just what I was looking for. Aft er about a week of not really knowing what to do the students started to have really good chats. I gave them a month to get used to the idea and then told them that they had to do it before class. I know have students who are chatting in English on the el evator on the way to class. That's something I never thought I'd see in my classes here. Name: Howard Brown
Email: sunaosan@msn.com
Location: Nagoya, Japan
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