Talking Square Tables

Kevin Meek

INTRODUCTION:

My JTE and I decided that we would ‘ease up’ on the text book for a while and have students do more ‘free talk’. This is not a particularly original idea, but I like it because it worked for me. Maybe it will work for you too. You will need to modify it to suit your students’ capacity and motivation levels.

PREPARATION:

1. A week, or at least a few days, before the lesson, decide on a simple topic for conversation, perhaps linked to something you plan to cover in the text book (in my case, topics were loosely linked to the textbook Interact, Episodes 4 – 8).

2. Prepare a work sheet with questions or vocabulary to serve as guidelines for students.

3. For homework, students must prepare the topic by answering the questions and/or using the guidelines. Tell them that they must prepare a 1 minute speech and that one rule is "NO Reading!", so they have to remember it. Each student will present in small groups and will ask their group members questions. Topics might include: my favourite singer/band/movie/place/etc.; my hometown; something I really like; a country I want to visit; etc.

PROCEDURE:

1. Warm up: (5-8 minutes)

Ball and Box or Snowballs* (see below for how to run) set the tone for conversation because it gets them practicing asking and answering questions

2. Cover the section of your text book you are on for that period (15-20 minutes)

3. Conversation time: (20 minutes)

Divide the class into small groups of 4 students (or whatever works best in your situation). Have them move their desks to sit in squares (hence square tables). Have students make their presentations one by one. Each other student in the group is required to ask at least one question after each group member presents.

4. If there is still time, you can have each group or random groups choose 1 representative to present to the whole class.

This lesson is not good for the start of the school year. It works best when teachers and students have come to understand each other and have become comfortable working together. There is always the worry that students will go off and chat in Japanese, but if you develop a habit of NO JAPANESE in OC lessons and walk around and check, between you and the JTE, there should be enough pressure to minimise it. At first students may be really shy, especially when they are required to come up with questions, but I find they warm up after doing it a few times and really get into it. If your students sit in the same seats all the time like mine do, you might also consider switching up the groups for a bit of variety. The “talking part” of the lesson usually takes about 20 minutes, but the time is really up to you.

Ball and Box:

Have strips of paper with questions written on them in a box. From one end of the room, circulate the box and from another end, circulate a ball. Play music while these are going around the classroom. Whoever has the box when you stop the music takes out a question and reads it. The student with the ball has to answer. Depending on how advanced students are, “why?” is always a good follow-up question to make them talk more.

Snowballs:

A more advanced version in which students are given the strips of paper to write down the questions themselves. Once they have written the questions, they crush the papers and throw them into a box. Teachers redistribute the questions so that each student gets a question different from the one they write. Volunteers are chosen to read and answer the question they have. Alternatively, the volunteer might be asked to pick another student to ask the question. I use warm up activities similar to these a lot because I use the same kinds of questions all the time. As the year advances, students find the questions easier and easier and are more comfortable raising their own.