First conversation club! Sydney and I decided to have the theme for tonight be National Holidays and it was really interesting for us to learn about the cultures of our students. I was worried we wouldn’t have anyone show up, but we had 10 students of various levels. A few of them were the advanced students from our grammar lab.
We played a short video at the beginning of class, but again had to share screen and had some volume issues. Then we introduced ourselves to the students with some quick facts and images so that those who didn’t know us could feel more comfortable. I think in future we will do the introductions before we play the video so everything flows a bit better.
The discussion and conversation in each of the breakout rooms were really cool to participate in. I learned a lot about different festivals in different countries, but I hope it was as engaging for the students. I think that our enthusiasm would probably transfer to them a bit though, as the vibe of each of the rooms was positive. There were a few lower-level students who were using their L1 to in one of the breakout rooms, but when I asked them to try to use English for the activity they completely silenced themselves. I don’t know if I was fear, or embarrassment, or annoyance that caused them to stop talking. I need to find a way to request that with the students that doesn’t evoke that response.
Afterwards, Hilda suggested that we need to moderate our speed of speech and word choice a bit more for the lower level students, so I will try to incorporate that in the future.
