We had a wonderful lesson, full of all kinds of different things.
As not many people were in class at the beginning, I started with wonderful news I had had before in the day. 1. I got my perks for supporting Mujeres 4, a crowdfunding project by Isabel Ruiz Ruiz,* and 2. El País published an important article on Marisa Mediavilla, who, like Isabel, is a guest speaker in our Feminist Cultural Week. In this article, Marisa mentions me, and considering we’ve been anonymous activists for decades, the fact that our names were together in the mass media makes me laugh and I feel thrilled! I’m not into stopping being anonymous, really, for the freedom, but we face so much hardship of all kinds that this is like a little break! The article is here.
*If you want to get any of Isabel’s amazing works, you can shop online. You get the merchandise in 2 or 3 days. It’s really fast and effective! (I do not get a commission, OK? I’m just supportive of independent projects).
As it turned out, many people did not know what crowdfunding was, so I explained. If you like, I designed an activity on that, so we can do it in January.
We moved onto reading the lesson plan: Pulling our To-do List together, and we managed to go through the list and clarify all kinds of questions, so that people could feel they’re on top of things now — not lost! What did I explain?
How to work on your writing assignments. Watch my video based on what I say in the C1 Resource Pack. It’s here on Writing File above. Task 2 has a deadline soonish, and you should respect the word limit and things like including factual info before the task. Please, don’t hand in a piece of paper with a text without a title or your name or task description. It’s loveless! Task 3 is for our first week after the winter holidays / Xmus.
I was asked why you all had to handwrite your pieces, instead of type them. The reason is you’ll be training for exams (we don’t need to take exams to train for exams, many of the things in our methodology are good for life and exam training), so that’s why you need to follow the BEFORE – DURING – AFTER writing process I describe, and in the DURING time yourselves as you write out your piece FOR THE FIRST AND ONLY TIME. Previous writing is just brainstorming, outline, lists of useful language.
Obviously, if you have no other option, you can type and send in your pieces, but that’s a last resort.
Handouts. I gave out the paper copy of a kit to learn to write formal letters requesting respect for human rights (Writing Task 3), and showed people the page above, which I created so you have relevant resources at hand. About your letter, you have two options: do it and never send it, or do it and send it after I have a look to check it’s OK in every way. That’d be in January, when we’re back together.
About orals. I’m asking people to send in examples of their listening/speaking work. This should’ve been done throughout the course, particularly by those people who have not shared any Oral Presentation they worked on properly at home before! Language learning is not about working hard for a couple of weeks every three months, really. It’s easier for the brain to get input every day, even if you just sit and do more work at the weekend.
I answered questions on what kind of oral. I suggest a Ngozi oral review, or summary, but you can do whatever you like, for instance, retellings of Mary Poppins, by chapters or if you’ve already listened to the whole story, of the whole story. Please, remember to give factual information at the beginning of your recording. I need to know WHAT you are going to do. Don’t include your full name — it’s a recording. I mean the task description. I mentioned Asun’s recordings as an inspiring example: that she’s recorded her Dramatized Reading practice, and one of her lists of Useful Language on Poppins. María Isabel has sent in an oral presentation of about 5 minutes, which is great!
When people send me their orals, I reply with an LoM, so they can improve and record their final version for their Speaking File. When you do it in class, you also need to get feedback. At times you won’t bother in recording the final version — whenever my feedback is on little things, like when I sent feedback to Asun on her sent orals.
So — I want to get an oral and a writing from everybody before we part, considering I have not received enough information. I explained this, that my request is not about flunking people, but about gathering information to help each person, also with choosing their personal projects for 2019.
Next we organized the DR sessions: Booking for the Friends Performances
And we tried to finish with the Ngozi worksheet (please, download the 4-page copy with my answers, so you can check what you are curious about, and feel free to bring this up whenever, it can be a little oral you contribute in every lesson!), but the first question led us to an interesting session of sharing life experiences, experiences of feeling at ease, at peace in one’s mind, feeling good, engrossed in what you are doing, involved in something you love.
I have to say that I made a mistake: I overcorrected a language item. Because we’ve been brought up in a culture where prescriptivists have great impact on our minds, when hearing an adjective close to a verb I corrected that, but it was wrong. When we say “I feel good” it does sound informal, but it isn’t. It’s the correct way of saying you feel positive things. If you say “I feel well” this just means your health is OK, you might be recovering from an illness.
I also learned/learnt a new word I had never had the time to look up!: endorphine! Thank you, students! I know it’s surprising but I don’t know the meaning of may words in Spanish or English! I thought I did not have of those! 😀 Anyway, apparently our body releases endorphins, which trigger positive feelings, feelings of happiness and wellbeing.
After the lesson, Esther and I had some time together, and as we talked, I realized what her personal project could be for 2019, so I made the proposal. I’m just mentioning this so you remember that apart from our work together and your individual work, and connected to both, you should have a personal project of your own, which you’d share later on.
Lesson Plans for next Tuesday: Esther will recite the lyrics of a song, Ana will ask me to explain the trick to know when to pronounce the –ed ending as a /t/ or a /d/, we’ll review the bookings and groups for the Friends activity, in case we need to change or complete anything, we might have other orals by sts, and the more time-consuming activity this day will be reading out the HR Declaration, to edit sexist language, and also underline other items that might need updating because of our progress in understanding human questions. Our work on this will be shared in the SCF in whichever way you wish. And I suggested we send the final document to the UN, if people agree.
Pending stuff: I haven’t posted my feedback on mistakes the other day, but I will.
EDITED LATER ON: I forgot to say that at the beginning, considering recent news on party politics, and because it relates to human rights, I improvised a talk on my views of the question Democracy, Political Parties and Human Rights. It was an example of an oral reasoned opinion. But as I improvised, I did not monitor time, which would’ve been a requirement. Give it a try!
Michelle Ford's 2018-19 C1.1 Course Blog EOI Fuengirola (state-run language education) 