This blog is to talk about a latest thing I
have tried with regards to 'English Corners'. English corners are generally
supposed to be 'free talk' time for the language learners where they can 'talk
about anything'. But I have often found that conversations never really get
going in my English corners when I offer to just let them talk.
It seems that they don't simply want to talk
but want to learn something while in the session almost like a formal lesson.
One of the main plans was to have a topic and from the topic and the related
dialogue, the vocabulary would come out.
My latest discovery is using a CCTV 9 program
called 'Crossover'. In this program, three people spend 30 minutes talking
about anything and everything. In each program, they have a specific topic. For
example, one of the latest ones was 'the new anti-smoking law in China' which
is due to be implemented in January 2011. During the talk, they have specific
questions to cover and the program is generally well organized.
The persons in the show are Ji Xiaojun who
works for CCTV 9 and is the host. The two guests are Charlotte MacInnis and
Julien Gaudfroy. The two guests are actually quite known in China because of
their Chinese language skills and experience in the Chinese culture.
So what I do is go to the CCTV website and
download the program (they are available for download although I'm only able to
download 5 minutes of it). We then begin the topic of the day by watching 5
minutes of the show and observe ways of carrying on dialogues in natural
English (incomplete sentences, interrupting, one word comments ...etc.) Having
begun the topic, we now continue our own discusion with the questions I
prepared beforehand and any other direction the discussions go to (I listen to
the complete 30 minutes beforehand and note any interesting questions that we
could use in our English corner.)
Beginning the English corner with the
watching of this show seems to get them going and seems to make the
participants comfortable in expressing themselves.
The topics are common and not too complicated
(eating, shopping, smoking ...etc) and although the speakers speak at a native
rate of speech, they do speak quite clearly. The participants in my English
corner said that they can understand around 80% of it which is perfect for
their 'i + 1' language progress (Krashen). We only watch 5 minutes of the show
and I encourage them to watch the rest on their own.
