ESL conversation upper intermediate-lower advanced conversation course
 

Hey there. I'm currently working on setting up a course outline for my future conversation lessons at a school I temp. This school calls me when they can get about 3-5 students for a conversation class. I'm about to finish my second group at the school. Things are going well but the school gives me no teaching material or suggestions. Being at the end of the second group, I'm a little burned out and my brain is a wreck. To make sure this doesn't happen again, I'm saving all my lessons I prepared (I saved the lessons the first time...but I was a new teacher then so I'm not too fond of the setup...some were good...some I scrapped.) Next time I'm going to set up the class in units and I was hoping some of you could check this basic outline and offer some suggestions. The class starts after the 42 hours and there is no continuation.

Unit 1: Introductions and life information (each class in this unit will begin with a fast, new icebreaker each day as the school usually lets new students 'demo' the class for the first month).
*Self introductions, icebreaker fun
*Biography and Autobiography
*Family
*Health
*Emotions

Unit 2: Around the World (Each class in this unit will offer various tips to improve/practice pronunciation)
*Transportation
*Traveling and Countries
*Weather
*Culture
*Animals
*Environment and Future of the Planet

Unit 3: At the Store (Each class will have a brief stint...ie...10 minutes or less...to practice sounds through tongue twisters and other various means...particularly sounds difficult for the students....such as the /th/ sound.).
*Buying and Selling
*Clothing
*Marketing/advertising
*Restaurants

Unit 4: For Fun (By this point, students will have been assigned to watch an English movie. At the beginning of each class, one of the students must give a movie report and the others will ask questions about it. This may also be done with books or a music album...if the student prefers).
*Entertainment
*Movies
*Music/Art
*Hobbies
*Holidays

*Farewell class...last day, random question fun

This is the outline of the basic course. The students are in the intermediate range...some lower advanced. The students in my current class (there are 8) are aged from 16 to somewhere in the 40s. I wanted to avoid anything controversial...I teach in China and I don't want to offend anyone.

If anyone has suggestions, please, let me know.

Re: ESL conversation upper intermediate-lower advanced conversation course
 

You have some good ideas. I hope you prepare all your lessons on a computer, so they are easy to save and to find in the future.
How many hours do you want to spend on each unit?
Do you need to teach writing, or do the students have writing skills? Teaching writing can take a lot of time. You may find out that students don't know certain grammar structures, and then you will have to devote time to teaching grammar. That is no small matter.
In California, health and emotions are often taught in a beginning class. Are you sure that the students didn't learn these already? I am not sure what kinds of speaking activities you might use for health and emotions. These are personal matters and some people may not want to discuss them.

Re: ESL conversation upper intermediate-lower advanced conversation course
 

Yeah, my lessons are all prepared on a computer. I'm planning on printing them out along with the supplementary material. That way I can put together a binder/notebook with everything I need just in case my computer has any issues.

The time spent on each unit is strictly based on the number of topics it has. Each topic (what I listed) is its own class and lasts for two hours.

The class is essentially a conversation class. I was told not to worry about handwriting/reading or achieving perfect grammar. The students just want to practice their oral English. I do want to help them out with improving their grammar tho. Hmmm, if I find I need to explain any advanced points....I might be able to do that through email. As this is strictly a conversation course, I don't want to spend too much time on that area.

Ahh, health and feelings are actually sort of fun. Within health, we've discussed fitness, eating healthy, and medicine (western medicine vs chinese medicine). I also printed out an article about a toddler in Indonesia that smokes 20+ cigarettes a day. Seeing the students reaction and having the follow up conversation was pretty fun. Oh, another point I touched on was which parts of the body can 'ache' and which parts get 'pains'. This went pretty well, despite being a boring area I think. I drew a basic stick figure on the board and let the students label everything they could....then I added anything I thought was important.

For feelings, most of the students learn the basic feelings....like happy, sad, angry, etc. I get into a few more emotions (scared, jealous, embarrassed, proud)...including the noun and adjective (ie happiness vs happy). I passed out a matching exercise for a warm up activity. This had some of the usual emotions listed with an example of them on the side. The students matched everything up and then we talked about follow up questions...got them to give new examples of situations where someone might feel a certain way. I also let students discuss one of their 'most (proudest, angriest, etc)' moments.

I think being a conversation teacher is a lot easier than other types of teaching. It's just a bit wracking trying to come up with some role plays for some of these topics. Especially for environment/future of the planet. The class is pretty laid back in a lot of ways. I can also be myself which is nice. For the kids I teach, I have to be an actor like you would see on the Disney Channel or Sesame Street. x.x;; It's fun tho, but tiring. Very, very tiring...tho it's rewarding!

Re: ESL conversation upper intermediate-lower advanced conversation course
 

Hi Chokosaki

One of the points I make in my activities book for teens and adult learners is to put the onus on them some of the time. For example I use several activities in class that the students prepare instead of me.

That has two main benefits: if the students are picking the topic or producing the work then they are more involved in it, and thus more motivated during the lesson to see how what they prepared turns out.

They do the prep work not me!

So let me give you some concrete examples. In all cases first you demo the activity in class with an example prepared by you so that every one understands the task and knows what they are expected to prepare.

Decisions:
These are mini-role-plays. Some may be very quick, some may take longer so you need plenty of scenarios so that you don't have to attempt to drag something out artificially.

Give students a scenario and ask them what they would do. Student A has to then persuade the others to come around to his way of thinking. If another student disagrees he has to say why. Student A earns points for each student who shares his opinion. In the next scenario it's student B's turn to persuade the others to share his view.

The issues can be big or small, such as for the weather, you have planned a walk with a picnic but it's raining. Do you go anyway? Or, there's a drought, but your neighbour is watering his lawn every day, at five o'clock when it's still hot. Do you say/do anything? If you are wondering what scenarios would be interesting to your students you'll find out if you let them come up with them themselves!

Call my bluff definitions:
This activity is useful because it can be tailored to fit any topic. It's a good way for the students to revise vocabulary that has come up during a unit and deepen their knowledge of the words. It can also be really fun depending on the definitions that come up.

Students prepare three definitions of a word that they look up in the dictionary, two true and one fake, or one true and two fake. The other students listen to the definitions and decide which the true one is.

The advantage of activities like the two above is that they fit into any unit, and students prepare the activity for you. There are plenty of activities like this one here:
Call my bluff teaching idioms

Some ideas for conversation questions here:
ESL Conversation activities for teens and adults

All the best
Shelley