What?! Students Don’t Like Homework?!

Oral English class with Mr. Nielsen is pretty much seen as playtime with Mr. Laowai. I know the kids don’t take my class seriously and discard everything we’ve talked about as soon as the bell rings. Now that the semester is nearing the end (still one more month to go, but… I’ve been counting down for a while), I’ve gone back to my old lessons to review. Wow, it’s sad how much they’ve forgotten.

To force them to actually practice what we’ve gone over, I’ve started giving small homework assignments. I know the students are already swamped with homework, so the last five minutes of class is to give them a head start. The first time we did this, they didn’t think I was serious and showed up next week with nothing done. The students who didn’t do it got to stand in back of the class for 15 minutes. Ha! Mr. Nielsen is serious, after all.

The current homework assignment is about the differences between American and British words. It’s good to know, since most of their school books are based solely on the latter. I wanted them to write a conversation between two people (one American, one British) using at least eight of the words we discussed. During the five minutes of work time, I walked around the class and saw some amusing dialogues:

B: Hi.
A: Hi.
B: Nice to meet you.
A: Nice to meet you, too.
B: How are you?
A: I’m fine, thank you. And you?
B: I’m good.

Stop, stop, stop! Let’s not waste time on greetings when all you have to do is use the vocabulary words! And that’s exactly what the next student was trying to do, however lazily:

A: Where is the elevator?
B: Pardon?
A: The elevator. Where is it?
B: Elevator?
A: Yes.
B: Pardon?
A: The elevator.
B: What is an elevator?

Nice try, but you can’t just use the word “elevator” eight times.

21 December 2009 | Teaching | Comments | Home
tags: class activities

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