The First Lesson

Yesterday, Saturday, I was asked to come into work at my base school to help teach an english class to 12 prespective 1st year students. Here in Japan, students have a legal right to attend High school and as such they are able to choose which public high school they want to go to, based on their test scores. As a result, three English teachers and myself were asked to present what a normal English class or Oral Communication class would look like.

The class started about 10 minutes late because no one could find the classroom in which we were holding the class. The room is a well hidden one indeed. The Computer Audio Language Lab room was filled with computers, projectors, headphones and microphones. Luckily, the teachers and I had a practice lesson the day before so that we could learn how to use all of the equipment and such.

Eventually, all of the students arrived, 11 girls and 1 boy. I felt so bad for the little guy, he kept starring at the door hoping for another boy to enter. I began the class with a short self-introduction, which was returned by many blank stares. I was speaking very slowly and repeating myself a lot. I also showed some pictures of my family and friends, as well as of Arizona. I do not really know if they understood me or not, but I will be working with high school level students for the most part.

We then proceeded with the games: Catch the Criminal, Who Am I?, and Human Bingo.
Catch the Criminal is a game where the native English speaker (me) reads out the description of a person and the students have to find that person on the computer screen and write the number that corresponds to that person. Who am I is similar. The English speaker (me again) reads three sentences that describe a person, character or thing and the students have to write down who I am describing. Human Bingo was a bit more complicated but the English speaker (me) reads all of the instructions about the game, and then joins the game so the students can ask him questions too. The object of the game is to get 4 correct answers to the given questions in a row. This game was particularly difficult to explain but eventually everyone understood how to play. This was where I felt really bad for the lone boy in the class. Much like in the USA, young boys and girls in elementary and jr. high school have almost no interaction with the opposite sex. So much so, that doing pair working in classes can be very difficult if you do not have an even number of boys and girls.

Overall, I think the class was a success. I have 1 class on Monday with Oral Communications I. I hope my lesson plan will go over well. Wish me luck.
~Gio