Establishing the task

Thursday Sept 3 2009
Regency College, Pre-Intermediate class, pm.
Present: Andy, King, Jack, Pui, Badhi, Nabil, Sevcan, Denise

We discussed student needs and wants for future lessons:

What are my problems?
What do I want to do more of?
What do I need more of?
what isn't important for me?

Feedback shows that students feel the following are important for them, and that they would like to focus on these:

Speaking
Pronunciation
Being understood
Understanding others
Communicating with native speakers
Using vocab in context
Using audio-visual resources
Writing

and that the following are not so commonly mentioned as important

reading
grammar

King made the interesting comment that he got a thrill and felt proud when he managed to communicate in a real situation with a native speaker.

We discussed the possibility of doing a group project outside of the confines of the classroom, where language could be used in a real situation.





Friday Sept 4 2009
Wick Inn, Pre-Intermediate class, pm.
Present: Andy, King, Jack, Pui, Badhi, Nabil, Sevcan.

In the pub the group sat together and discussed the English Pub, using the following document:

Introductory questionnaire
Have you been in a pub before?
Where? When?
What was the atmosphere like?
What kind of people were there?
Did you like it?
Why/Why not?
What did you drink?
What do you think makes a typical English pub?
How are English pubs different from pubs/bars/cafes in your country?

The feedback showed a lot of misconceptions and ignorance about what happens in a pub and why people go there. the students' experience of pubs was at best limited.
Nabil had never been in a pub before, Pui said she thought pubs were immoral places, King found them boring in comparison with Chinese pubs. Jack talked about a drink consisting of coffee and beer. Badhi and all of the others talked about beer, but were unaware of different types or genres. Sevcan had more awareness than the others and spoke about shandy. Overall it seemed that the group had little perception of what happens in a pub and that there are different types of pubs.

The students then discussed these follow-up questions:

Do you think most students know what to do when they enter a pub?
Do you think students like going into an English pub?
Why do you think the English pub is an important place?
How can you find out more information about a pub?
What can you do with the information you have found out?

Feedback revealed that on the whole students are unsure what to do. Nabil talked about cultural differences. Some of the class though students like going in pubs. Others were unsuure and thought that ignorance and preconceptions prevented them from going to pubs. They were generally unaware of the community aspect of pubs and the idea of a local. With some further focussing Nabil suggested that information, ie research could be done by talking to pub customers, King suggested talking to staff. Jack mentioned real experience as a way to collect information. Pui and Badhi suggested internet-based research. The students need a lot of prompting to understand what the final question entailed: what they could do with the research. Fimally Jack came up with the idea of creating information/instructional notices for students around school. He also talked about putting it on the school website. Other ideas included creating an advertisement for a particular pub, writing a report. Jack then mentioned using You-Tube. He suggested incorporating written language through making a video with titles. Other ideas for media content were pictures, cartoons, short stories.

The discussion seemed to generate some excitement around making a film. The meeting ended with the announcement that as a group we would make a film. Process, content, timeframe yet to be discussed.