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3.General Conversations
Students lack the vocabulary and grammatical understanding to express themselves well. Teaching general conversation might allow them to learn some set expressions (e.g. “It's nice to meet you.”), but without a grammatical foundation, such an approach can be fairly ineffective for long-term language improvement. Students benefit from using a textbook and possibly even having a teacher who can speak their native language.
At this level, students should learn to describe their routines and people, make requests and suggestions, give advice, make invitations, etc. General conversation can be helpful practice for this. Develop a routine at the beginning of class of discussing past events, future plans, and general news (also don't forget to review the key items from the previous class).After 10-15 minutes or so, move on to a textbook. Students still need to master several basic language items (e.g. adverbs of frequency, superlatives). A well-structured textbook is needed for this.
Students at these levels should feel that they have somewhat of a grasp on English grammar and therefore would benefit from conversational practice. This is true.A conversational approach is beneficial at these levels; however, the teacher needs to continually adjust the complexity of the topics and the conversation to continually provide new vocabulary and communicative tasks to the student. Understanding the effectiveness of your lessons is the key to doing this. Determining how effective your classes are for the student depends on his/her goals. Let us assume the student wants the typical things: speaking practice, error correction, the introduction of new vocabulary and expressions, and probably to be somewhat entertained.
I take notes in my class while the student speaks. These notes mainly contain the student's errors and new vocabulary and expressions I introduce. After a one-hour conversation class, I can have one, two, or possibly three pages of notes.The student hasn't spoken English in a while, so he stumbles and makes many basic mistakes. This often happens when I have a new student. I'll have 4 pages of notes after a 1.5-hour class. Generally, however, as the student remembers how to use grammar and fixes his basic mistakes, I'll be down to about two pages after a few weeks. Having a lot of notes is fine for the first few classes.I'm overloading the student with too much error correction or vocabulary introduction. Sometimes I'm too keen to teach everything and I find myself teaching a difficult expression (such as “the plan was hatched”)
The topic or material used in the lesson was completely new to the student. For example, the student had never discussed artificial intelligence or corporate whistle-blowing. So we covered a lot of new vocabulary, hence the three pages. This can be a great thing, as long the topics aren't too obscure and the vocabulary will benefit the student in the long run.
Therefore, to make the general conversation approach effective, it should be challenging enough to take the student out of his comfort zone and into uncharted waters without overwhelming him (or her). The difficulty of topics should evolve with the student. And it should be noted that even if you are very creative in coming up with new topics, a purely conversational class, even when challenging, can have other limitations, such as...You! Your lexicon is limited. You say “get along with sb” so your student never learns the British expression “get on with sb. ”Some words just never come up in a regular conversation. Without an article, I would never teach the word “conversely” because I always use the informal “on the other hand. ”These can be good reasons for using introducing material in class, particularly when you've had a student for a long time and he/she is quite familiar with your communication style, lexicon, and opinions on various topics. In conclusion, with the exception of beginner students, the general conversation approach is useful for each level. However, the conversation topics must be adjusted to each level and become less general and more specific to satisfy the needs of the student as he or she advances to higher levels. Also, printed materials can be a great resource for enriching the class with language and ideas that you might not introduce to your student otherwise.8
There are of course people who just want to meet and `chat' while they have coffee. They may be rich, lonely, or just lack ambition. For these students, I've always just made sure they were entertained and happy. If the student only wants general chitchat and not to have a more effective class, then there's no problem with that. In these situations, however, I usually feel more like a conversationalist (or therapist even) than a language teacher.More modelling is needed at beginner levels. Hence, there are activities like communicative drills and dialogues. At advanced levels, wider parameters can be provided. But since intermediate levels are somewhere in between, we can have general conversations around relatively common topics. This helps students gain more confidence speaking freely. And, it takes them outside the boundaries of limited exchanges found in dialogues.For our sample activities, let’s offer our class members the subject of ‘favorite restaurants.’ This is not an uncommon topic in life. As such, you can use it to get intermediate-level learners talking.9
Notice we didn’t go straight to the punch with: “What’s your favorite restaurant?” That’s pretty much a beginner-level question. Try getting creative with your questions. Lead them down a path of new words. Scaffold from what they know to where they want to go.Ideally, these questions would be given to pairs who would converse. If that isn’t possible, create a two-way exchange between yourself and the class members rather than the typical one-way, interview-type conversations we’re all familiar with. The ultimate idea is to let this thing take off while you are free to observe areas for feedback after.10
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