Edited Class Notes III

Stage	Content	Time (all approx)
Intro	Lesson Aims	5m
1	Used To extra materials	5m
2	Sunday’s vocab.: hangman;	10
3	IE Unit 2 (to p23)	120m
4	Present Perfect Homework intro	5m
5	Subject/Object Questions homework	5m

Punctuality at the start of the lesson and at the teabreak has not improved. Indeed, after the 30 minute teabreak, some friend of the class, not a student here, joined them in the classroom and seemed to be ready to join the class. I’m beginning to wonder about the college’s approach to punctuality, my own, and the bigger pedagogic picture.

That apart, the lesson proceeded very well. I’ve found a strategy to prevent Old Gomez from taking us down paths of getting me to give detailed, time wasting explanations of grammatical rules. Any grammar that comes up, that he wants to explore above and beyond the scope necessary for this class, I copy the relevant section from a grammar text book, and give it to him for homework. This should ease his anxiety, and save precious hours in the class room.

The class had indicated that they felt that listening was one of their weak skills. I do not consider that it is, and had told them so. We had agreed, therefore, that I would let them have more idea of what would be expected of them in the exam, and today I played a section of the sample listening test; (I didn’t want to give them too much of this because we’ve only got two or three sample papers, and need to avoid queering the pitch for mock exams). Unfortunately, I blundered in not giving them the accompanying paper test – and the sound only file was perhaps confusing. However, they did seem a little reassured, and I’ll make up for my blunder next week by giving a very short extract from the paper.

All of the work I’m doing on anxiety mitigation appears to be bearing fruit. They were able to agree that we leapfrog some sections of the book which have no direct relevance to them (there's a whole lot of listening in International Express Intermediate Unit 2 – an excessive amount, I’d say).

We finished with a discussion about homework. Most produced some, though not all, of what they’d been asked for. Mustafa produced all of it. They promised, sincerely and apologetically to have it done by next week. They were frankly rather charming about this and I was disarmed. I explained that it was vital that they did homework, and indeed it was part of my contract with the company that I give it and chase it up. (I’m not entirely sure if this is 100% true, but I have a feeling there’s something along those lines in my contract). If I didn’t do it therefore, I’d be in breach of contract and flying back to England. “Don’t fly! Don’t fly!” chorused Old Gomez and Fester