Conversation Club – Teaching Reflection #4

Photo by Kevin Curtis on Unsplash

What is your favourite place?

Oct 21/20

This evening my partner and I taught the English Conversation Club (ECC) that is part of the Language Learning Centre at TRU.  The ECC is open to any student, at any level, to join in and practice their English conversation skills. There is no mandatory attendance, so the number of attendees and their skill level is random and variable.  It is a far more challenging prospect than teaching a regular class of students.

We chose the theme of “Your Favourite Place”.  We each introduced ourselves and then asked the students to do the same.  We had several activities and questions planned.  At first, we had to call on people, but as the hour progressed people volunteered more.  As a cultural note, the 6 students that joined in were mainly from Japan and China, so they politely waited for each person to take a turn and didn’t pry by asking questions.  It was also either very early, or very late for the students as they were online in their home countries.  Everyone got practice speaking, but it was not a very lively conversation by Canadian standards.

I was sick this evening.  I didn’t have much of a voice, so my partner did most of the explaining of the conversation topics and activities.  I was more active in the last half of the meeting. I felt that my partner and I worked well together.  We didn’t speak over each other and coordinated our speaking times.

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