Language focus
Diagnostic- in this exercise you will get to know a lot about the new students' breadth and depth in English. You will be listening for errors, for avoidance tactics, but most of all for the way the students feel in their English language clothes.

Proposed M.I. focus
All

Level
Intermediate to advanced

Time
90 -120 minutes

Preparation
Photocopy one map of Europe per 3 students

In class

1. If this is the first class greet the students and then shut your eyes and go into a very short monologue about what you like or dislike about area in which you live. Ask them to now write half a page about the area in which they live. Ask them to do this in English and tell them that they will have a choice as to whether they want to show it to anyone else in the group.( see Step 9, below)
2. Now ask them to take large pieces of paper and ask them to draw the streets in the neighbourhood round the last house/flat they lived in. ( if they have always lived in the same place the draw the streets round this abode. Group the students in fours and ask them to tell their colleagues the differences between the old neighbourhood and the current one. Listen in to one group so you have some idea of each of person's weaknesses and strengths in English.
3. Ask each student to think of two people in their family whom they would like the other learners to meet. The whole group sits in a big circle and the first student shows the whole group how their first person sits and how they walk. The student then imitates the sitting and walking of the second person they have chosen. In both cases they say what relationship they have with the person.
4. Pair the students and ask Person A to ask the same question over and over again ( 10 to 20 times) Person B has to give as many different answers as she can: HOW DOES MUSIC FIT INTO YOUR LIFE? Person B then becomes the questioner with this repeated sentence: WHAT IS MUSIC FOR YOU?
   
5. Dictate the following verses and ask the students to fill in the last two words in each:

   If they made diving boards     To make a name for learning
   six inches shorter             when other roads are barred
   think how much sooner          take something very easy
   you'd be in ………………..           and make it……………. 

   TIMING TOAST
   There's an art of knowing when.
   Never try to guess.
   Toast until it smokes and then
   twenty …………..

   Ask different students to read out their endings.

   Piet Hein's ( Grooks II, Blackwell's and Borgens Forlag. 1992 ) endings are:

   the water
   very hard
   seconds less
   
   

6. ( here we need a political map of Europe ) Group the students in threes and give them a map of Europe. Set the students this problem: a map publisher wants to save on the cost of using many different colours to differentiate the countries of Europe. What is the minimum number of colours she can get away with without any adjacent countries being the same colour? ( A country touching another at one point, but with no length of common border, is not regarded as "adjacent" ) Ask the three's to tell you about how they went about solving the problem. Explore their methodology. When they ask you for the solution refer them to the complex arguments in Chapter 10 of Malcolm Lines's book Think of a Number. The Chapter title is:
   Are four colours enough?

   Read the students this quote from Lines' book:
   " One very important offshoot of the 120 year attack on the four colour problem has been the development of a completely new branch of mathematics known as "graph theory ". It concerns itself with ways of connecting paths between points in particularly efficient ways."

7. Ask the students to introspect and to think of any time they have felt very much in tune with nature or the weather over the past few months. This sometimes happens when you walk in the mountains, or sail or garden.
   Ask each person to briefly tell the group any experience of this sort they have had. ( This plenary activity will give you an idea of some of the students' language strengths and weaknesses- how does each person in the group relate to English?)
8. Ask all the students to put up large name panels in front of them. Ask each person to pick a person in the group they want to briefly " become". They should try and imagine what is like to be this person, to wear this person's clothes etc…
   Each student then writes a one-page letter as from this chosen person to some one else in the group. Example: Herbert decides to step into the shoes of Noriko and then writes a one page letter to Mario of the sort he fantasises Noriko would write.
   When each student has written his/her role play letter s/he gives it to the person he has role-played. this person reads it and then gives to the addressee.
   Example: Herbert gives the letter he has written to Noriko. She reads it and gives to Mario. At this stage the students are up and milling round the room, reading, laughing and talking.
9. Remind the learners of the half page they wrote at the start of the lesson on their home neighbour hood . Ask them to re-read this and then, if they want to, show what they have written to one or two other students.