A Thematically Based English I Course

For the past six years, I have worked to create original activities that offer students not just communication using target structures and vocabulary but opportunities for analytical and creative thinking as well. Most activities are related to the lessons' themes in order to keep students in one context, thereby allowing them better and lengthier access to their top-down knowledge. This paper will outline the fourteen thematic lessons I have prepared for the English I (E 1) course. A recurring feature of each lesson is the weekly homework: a writing assignment and a short vocabulary list to help students prepare for the next lesson. With a minimum length of only five sentences, each writing assignment is quite brief; however, each requires some thinking about the subsequent lesson's theme. The vocabulary should be studied as homework so that I will not need to spend time explaining it in class. When the next lesson begins, students exchange notebooks, read someone else's assignment, and write a response of no less than three sentences. Responses may be criticisms, compliments, suggestions, or miscellaneous comments. The notebooks are then returned to their owners so the responses can be read. Since this is the first time to implement this write and respond homework, the results are not in yet. Vocabulary is tested in random quizzes at the beginning of lessons. Tardy students are thus penalized by missing the points from the vocabulary quizzes. Each lesson also has a short Find Someone Who... activity as a backup measure. This is a list of ten sentences analogous to the lesson topic, such as is an only child. These sentences must be turned into questions that are asked to different students. Thus the preceding example would become Are you an only child? If a student answers Yes, their name is written down, a follow-up question is asked, and its answer is noted. A new student must be found for each question, so there is much brief interaction with peers.

公開日:2010年1月24日で登録したコンテンツは、国立情報学研究所において電子化したものです。