Teaching English by Accident
Accidents aren’t a subject that come up often in EFL lessons. The books usually stick to weather, greetings, and school life. If these are students who want to eventually work for a foreign company or at least have foreign friends, though, it’s helpful to know what somebody means when they start screaming, “I cut my finger! I cut my finger!” Well, maybe that story tells itself. But the sign that reads “Danger: Electric Shock” is also of importance, right?
The problem with teaching accidents is that most of the students have no prior exposure to the vocabulary. You end up doing a lot of explaining in the beginning, a lot of, “What’s this? A pan. What could happen? It could burn you,” which is a surefire way to lose their attention. The only way to get that attention back is to rip your shirt open and start howling, “I’m on fire! I’m on fire!”
As part of my lesson, I drew a guy walking but who wasn’t paying attention. That’s it. Then I asked the class what things could be in front of him. They called out answers like a dog, a river, a car, a tree, another person. So I would draw these things and talk about the accident that could happen. The dog could bite him. He could fall into the river. He could run into the other person. And now they’re learning things they picked.
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