Homework as a Language Opportunity

When I first started giving homework assignments, I was mostly interested in just forcing the students to think about my lessons after class. But there’s more to it than that. We spend the first ten minutes of class presenting random assignments, and that’s ten minutes I don’t have to prepare new material for!

Seriously, though, I find presenting homework to be a beneficial exercise in getting the students to listen to each other for a change. I know the school system wants them to listen to me for the entire 45 minutes, but once I leave, they’re going to be saying, “Pardon?” to every English speaker they know. So after a student reads what they wrote, I’ll ask several other students to repeat or explain what they heard. Now that they know I will do this, it’s one of the few times the whole class is actually quiet.

Many of my assignments have been based on the students drawing something (like an island or a monster) and then describing it. These are the kind of assignments that don’t even feel like homework, because the students jump at a chance to be creative for once (their Chinese teachers would never let them draw a monster in class). When I asked students to read some of the first assignments we did, nobody wanted to volunteer. But when it came time to draw their island or monster on the chalkboard, I had to turn several away, because too many wanted to participate.

7 January 2010 | Teaching | Comments | Home
tags: class activities

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