Sep 14, 2013

The highway to fluency and a roundabout way to grammar


Photo by @GoldsteinBen via eltpics on Flickr
A second lesson with two new pre-intermediate (A2) students (I usually put my private students in pairs). In the first lesson we read three stories about immigrants (from Innovations Pre-Intermediate) and underlined useful bits of language (I hadn't introduced the word "chunk" yet). For our second lesson they were asked to prepare a short talk about their lives using as much "useful language" as they could – no writing! They did a pretty good job and successfully integrated some chunks into their stories:

Back home…
When I came over here…
I didn't have enough money
To support my family