Humanising Language Teaching
Year 1; Issue 7; November 1999

* Lesson 1 * Lesson 2

by Christine Frank, author of Challenge to Think, OUP

Lesson outline:

1. Choose a topic with the students or one that may have come up in the course book you are using, e.g. EMIGRATION:

   Divide the topic into six aspects, (in the case of EMIGRATION):

   1. Disappointment
   2. Ghettos
   3. A better life
   4. Unemployment
   5. The Language
   6. The Climate

2. Divide the class into six groups and allocate one aspect to each group, for example if you have 40 students you would have 6-7 in each group. They have to discuss their aspect and then as a group write half a page (roughly 100 words) about it.

3. You take the six-half pages from the groups and correct them for language mistakes - not content or style. Before the next lesson you will have to make five photocopies of the corrected versions to hand back

1. In the second lesson you re-group the class so that each student in the new group has written about a different aspect of the topic. Give out the corrected pieces of writing for the groups to read (No.'s 1-6). They have to pass the paper on until each student in the group has read every paper. They discuss what has been written.

2. Collect all the papers in and send the students back to their original seats. They should be given about 20 minutes to write individually on the topic including as many ideas as they wish from the various aspects.

3. Post the new pieces of writing round the wall for all to read.

Variation:

Allocate the aspects around the class. This can be done by giving them a number from 1-6. The students write half a page individually and you go round helping and correcting. After about 20 minutes put the students into groups of six, so that all the six aspects are represented. They read through what the others have written and write a group paper on the topic.

by Christine Frank, author of Challenge to Think, OUP

Lesson outline:

1. Divide the students into seven groups. If the number is not convenient it does not matter if the groups have not got the same number of students. - a 'group' may be as few as one student. Give each of the groups one of the following cards:

   Historical	Economic	Geographical
   Moral	Legal	Medical
   	Political

2. Then write the words, but one at a time, from the list below on the board:

   1. Drugs
   2. Unemployment
   3. Poverty
   4. Refuse
   5. Doping in sport
   6. Homosexuality
   7. Pollution

3. Let the students think about the word on the board in the context of the word on their card.

   Get the students to write one or two sentences down as a group.

   Collect these slips of paper (seven in all) and tell the students to pass their card to the next group.

   You put the next word on the board and ask the students to look at it in the light of the new word on their cards.

   Once one or two sentences have been written again collect the slips of paper and get the students to pass their card on to the next group and go on with the next word from the list above and so on.

   While the students are writing you can correct the previous sentences.

1. In the next lesson put the students in their original groups. Give each group the papers around one topic, e.g. 'drugs' for one group, 'unemployment' for another, etc. This means that each of these words has been commented on from seven different perspectives. The students read all the information and, as a group, write a coherent text.

2. Put the texts up round the walls for all to read.