Sunrise over Muscat

The last day of my teaching week and it's back to class 'D6' (the 35%ers in exams - not too bright).

Today was an ESP (English for Special Purposes) lesson revolving around 'telephone skills'; specifically, leaving a message. They can't really understand what I'm saying most of the time so language has to be kept very simple, and I also try to litter the lesson with a bit of Arabic to level the playing field.

The key to this kind of teaching is 'eliciting' whereby you try and extract what the students actually know rather than just telling them. I'm quite good at drawing cartoon characters, and so I use this to my advantage with this particular class.

It went a little something like this:

Draw an Omani on the board and name the drawing after a student (Yahyia).
Laughter.

Draw a mobile phone in Yahyia's hand.
"Phone teacher, phone!"

Draw a big building with lots of windows.
"House teacher?"
"Nope!"
"Company teacher?"
"Yup!"

Draw lots of people in the windows.
"Secretary, businessman, manager, pilot..."
"Yup, yup, yup, erm, nope."

Write '6:30pm' above Yahyia.
Students wonder where this is going.

Erase all the little people from the windows.
"Home teacher, to sleeping."

If Yahyia calls the company now, will anybody answer?
No!
Why not?
Sleeping teacher.
What will he hear?
Massage.
Message?
YES!

PHEW! (This took a lot longer than you might think!)

Cue workbook exercise which helps with the language needed for leaving a message after which there is a short writing task where they are required to write their own message using the language learned.

I also brought in a tape-recorder and a microphone and let them record their messages to make it more authentic for them. They loved this part and got right into it. When the messages were playing back, my job was to correct any pronunciation errors (stress, syllables, sounds etc) with them. The added bonus here was that as it was themselves they were listening to, it made it great fun too!

All in all, a great lesson.

-------
I would love to have Blipped a few of the students in this class but they are from the more remote parts of Oman and as such are very shy around cameras.

Instead, you get the sunrise this morning.

For another sunrise, from the same spot, and another bit of Blipping about the students mentioned above, click here.