Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 5; September 02

Where my English came from

Time: 40-50 minutes

Purpose: to invite people to think about the history of their English and how it came to them.

Preparation: prepare to tell the students about your first song in English your first story the first picture you can remember from an English book

Lesson outline:

1. Ask round the class at what age the students had their first contact with English. Ask them in what year that would have been. Explain that each person in the room has their own history in English and that this lesson is about that his-or-her-story.
2. Tell them the first song you learnt in English. Say or sing to them as much as you can remember. Ask them to write down as many lines as they can remember of their first song in English.
3. Tell them the first story you can remember being told in English. Ask them to write down 8-10 keywords from the first story they heard in English.
4. Describe the first picture you can remember for a book in English. Ask them to write three sentences about the first picture of this sort they remember.
5. Now dictate the following stem sentences:
   In my first English lesson I…………
   My first English teacher was…….
   The best homework they gave me in English was…..
   The coursebook I remember most………..because…..
   What my parents felt about English was……..
   In the English class I was……..
   When I first went to an English speaking country…..
   The first book I read in English was….
   I remember this funny mistake I made…..
   What annoyed me about English was……
   What thrilled me ……

6. Group the students in threes and ask them to share memories of their first song, story and picture and to then complete the stems.

Acknowledgement:

This exercise was inspired by a talk Joanne Collie gave at the APPI Conference in Portugal in 1998.