i was talking to one of my channel members in the discord server the other day and we
were just i was talking about video ideas and different topics and things like that
and he brought up bringing back the teaching vids and i thought that's a really nice idea
his specific idea was to talk about like the worst classes or the worst lessons the worst students
and things like that i thought you know that's a good idea but we we don't want to jump straight
into the bad stuff like i don't want people to think of a bad teacher or a bad person or whatever
i want to start with a few good ones i want to jump back into this teaching thing talking about
some of the really useful lessons some of the really great fun lessons that the students love
and that teach them something and well anyway let's get into it one of my favorite lessons a
lesson that i came up with a couple years ago and i'm going to be using it every year from now on
is this one right here complaining complaining is such a great lesson it sort of takes all of
those esl lessons sort of boxes it's one it's a specific kind of grammar point it's fun it's
really useful and practical it scales really well different students of different levels can focus
on different things like you can differentiate it's just a great lesson in my opinion i i love it
quick little bit of context as to like the background in which i use this lesson i teach
at sichuan university so my students are 18 or 19 years old they're not english majors they're all
different majors they all have different interests and they're all of different english levels so
i've got levels from like a2 speakers all the way up into like c1 or even c2 like almost native
english speaker levels they've all got different personalities of course it's kind of interesting
class sizes 16 students all the way up to about 60 students and there's a lot of stuff going on
so it's important to find a universal lesson that kind of applies to everything so let's get into
the lesson the lesson is complaining awesome let's start first you put up this slide right
here and you've got to elicit the word complain somehow you've got to elicit the word complain
from one of the students and once someone says the word complain you just swap over bam yes we are
talking about complaining today you give them the aims for the lesson which are be able to complain
in two to four specific situations you better understand the appropriate language involved in
complaining about something you learn about what one upping someone is and you attempt to one-up
somebody while complaining this little bit is kind of optional i may or may not do this depending on
like how fast the class goes my classes are 45 minutes this is probably good for about
an hour like an hour would be perfect for this kind of thing 50 minutes to an hour
we start off this lesson with an activity called optimist pessimist and i got this from a co-worker
it's a really great activity get everyone to partner up you have an a and a b now a is an
optimist and can only say positive things about a certain subject and b is a pessimist who can
only say negative things about a certain subject you give them a model topic like the weather you
you give them an example like a would say oh the weather's just amazing today it's so sunny
and then b would say oh my god it's so hot outside i can't stand it something like that
then they just go back and forth on the different topics and that's the first activity i have the
topics ready i show them one at a time so i've got food in sichuan i've got transportation in chengdu
and then i've got your roommates after the first one i do a slight bit of feedback i tell them
about some errors that i've heard or some ways to make things better and then you know let the
other two run and after the third one i do another small feedback session and my feedback is usually
focused on like intensifiers intensifiers are a big language point in this lesson using
intensifiers like really so too extremely totally um or you can get them to say a hundred percent
you know things like that to agree with somebody a hundred percent uh yeah there's a lot of little
intensifiers that you can use sorry there's a mosquito you can also focus on stress and
intonation if you hear problems with like vowel sounds or pronunciation you can work on that too
but yeah usually for me it's the stress intonation and the intensifiers that's what i really focus on
in the beginning after that feedback i go into sort of the scu rant sichuan university rant
get them to rant about their school so you have students a and b again it's a partner activity
a you're super super angry about something at citron university say anything you want
and b your job is to like support them and get them kind of more angry so a you're going to talk
about i hate the food at sichuan university blah blah blah and b is going to be like [ __ ] yeah a
hundred percent i i totally agree with you yeah tell me more come on and like it's sort of like
a hype man you know getting them to get more angry and then like when a gets tired then you
could switch over to b and then b gets his or her turn to rant and rave about something and this is
kind of the fun part again you remind them that they could say whatever they want i don't care
about profanity or whatever like for me at least because i'm at a university i don't really care
as long as they're getting into the activity and by this point in the class they are starting to
actually really get into the activity so they've done the activity they've ranted they've raved and
they've kind of been each other's height man and all of this so i give a little content feedback
we have a little joke about some of the things the students have said about sichuan university
and then i get into specific little bits of feedback such as a connected speech i might take a
sentence that i heard and i'll show them how words might connect together how pronunciation might
change if i've heard a pronunciation problem then i'll do that and i might back chain a sentence
then i start moving into the kind of one-upping bit of class you know do people complain
by themselves or do they complain to other people well they complain to other people
of course and then does the person you're complaining to just kind of go like this
yeah sorry about that or do they usually share a story of their own so they can sort of sympathize
with you and show that they have empathy for you it's usually the second one and sometimes there
will even be a little competition and people will one-up each other so i give them a bit of
target language like a few phrases like an example sentence i might like meld one of their example
sentences from before into one of my examples and let them practice a little bit of the stress and
the intonation and you can do a little control practice if you have time if you don't just jump
into the free practice let them go into the last activity and this activity is a little different
because it's a mingle activity everyone in the classroom stands up and they go talk to
random people and it's just sort of a free-for-all so what i do is i put up a different picture that
shows different context in which a student could complain in a cafeteria or i might show another
picture of sichuan university or i show a picture of a teacher something like that i'll get everyone
to stand up move to a different like table just move around the room just somewhere and i'll put
up a picture of say like bad cafeteria food and i'll say all right guys start complaining go and
i'll give them like maybe two minutes for each picture and then when the two minutes are up or
whenever i feel like it's time you know i i kind of shout at them hey new one and then i change the
picture and then when i change the picture they change partners they go find someone else and
they complain about that different situation to a different person and then the other person tries
to share their stories and tries to one-up et cetera et cetera and then like by this time in the
class everything's getting real loud because they they now know that they can say whatever they want
they can do whatever they want as long as it's within that particular context and it gets really
really insane it's very loud it's very fun it's definitely my favorite overall activity in this
lesson because everything is reaching the climax this is the climax of the lesson if we go through
the different contexts i'll have like three four five depending on the time and you know afterwards
of course you give more feedback and by this point in the lesson the only thing that's really left
to critique is grammar because they've figured out how to use intensifiers by now they've got
the stress they've got the intonation because it's stuff that i work on in previous lessons and then
yeah so now all you've got is like subject verb agreement and then you've got maybe narrative
tenses because they're telling stories about things that happen in the past and maybe a few
like small pronunciation errors um or stress errors and yeah save the last five minutes of
class for any feedback you want to give and then that's it that's the lesson it's a lot of stuff
packed into what for me is a 45 minute class and uh it's it takes a little while to hone everything
down but you know if you've got a 50 minute class or an hour class then it's absolutely perfect if
you're doing 90 minute lessons this might need to be padded up a little bit but it's super fun it's
really useful i like to use this lesson kind of halfway through my first semester with students
like so that's what's week seven or week eight because this is the lesson that sort of solidifies
me and the students relationships if i have a class that likes me we get along well and they
are very cooperative and do what i say and are fun this lesson really goes very very well and it
solidifies our relationship and it really just it's great if i have a class that's sort of
borderline and i'm not really sure if things are working out i'll pull out this lesson and then it
usually gets the students to turn the corner and then we kind of get along a lot better after that
if i have a class that just doesn't like me at all which doesn't happen that often anymore then
it definitely helps it helps kind of put everything back on track at least for
the next couple of weeks it sets the tone really well for the middle of the semester
and i don't know it's it's a good one to try and like i said before i will put it
in a dropbox or a google drive or something that you guys can access you can just download
this for free tweak it however you want because nobody's lesson is perfect everyone has different
things that they need to do different priorities and yeah but just you know use this as a framework
and i hope you will and yeah i guess that's about it then thank you all very much for watching good
luck teaching and if you like this video hit like and you can check out channel memberships
it's a great way to connect with me one-on-one you can chat on the discord we can
talk about video ideas just like this one right here there's a lot of cool things that you can
get through channel memberships or on patreon i've been a lot better about patreon recently
if that's not your thing don't worry about it just smash that like button and thank you all
very much for watching and i'll see you all next time good luck with your teaching you