The previous weekend was when we started making lesson plans (but firs we had to translate the syllabus) so the Thai girls and I decided to not have any excursions and spend the weekend working on whatever we needed to prepare for the lessons.
I was assigned the topic Degrees of Comparison. In all honesty, I did not think the students would be ready for this since I never heard them talk in English. However, I wanted my lesson to work well so I tried to design my lesson in a way that there will be many speaking and listening activities. I broke down the lesson into simpler parts and injected an activity after every part is tackled. This way, I can ensure mastery of the concept and practice of the skills. First, I focused on adjectives. When I was sure they know what adjectives are, I proceeded to my presentation about what it means to compare things. I showed similar objects with different sizes and had the students compare them, eliciting the comparative form of the adjectives. After that was an exercise forming the comparative forms of different adjectives to which I also drilled them with the pronunciation.
We then focused on the comparative sentence formation through an activity where students were asked to find a pair and were then given a pair of words to compare using the given adjective.
Of course, these sets are pretty easy. Yet, it was still quite a challenge for some students especially that they were asked to read and correct other pair's work. And to make them more confident in speaking, they were asked to speak out loud and have the others confirm if they heard the speaker or not. The cheeky ones definitely said they did not hear the speaker, just so to make fun of their friends.
After ensuring they know how to use the comparative adjectives in sentences (and actually use them in speech!), we proceeded to understanding the superlative degree. It was a lot less challenging as this is only another degree of comparison. The activity I gave them for this was a lot more fun because it involved movements all over the classroom. And again, the cheeky ones made it all the more fun with their sentences.
While the lesson was all fun and successful, there were some challenging times and issues that I had to deal with quickly. One of it was on the first period of the first day. I talked too fast! Everyone had a hard time understanding what I was saying because, again, they are not used to listening to someone speaking in English and I forgot about it. When I realised this, I slowed down my speaking pace and used simple sentences which they accepted so well. Also, the activities above were not the original words I prepared. I had to change the words in it to cater to the students' level.
Managing the time was also quite a challenge. I would meet with the students only twice a week for almost 2 hours each time. Not only was the schedule too dragging for me, it also could hardly allow the students to practice speaking regularly, that's why I tried to make them speak in every opportunity I could find. There were times when the students were finished with the activities and we still had 10 minutes left of our time. What I did was supplement them with activities that would make them listen and talk.
To make sure everyone is participating in the activities, I constantly monitored them and tried to give assistance and supplement words whenever they need it. I also encouraged them to never be shy to ask for help when needed. I think they appreciated the attention I gave to each one of them even thought I could not remember a single name of theirs (hehe). Misbehaviours were also dealt with positively. When no one volunteers to answer my questions, I would pick the one which I think was not listening or seemed to be out of the zone. The good thing about this was that even though the student might felt as if he was put on a spotlight, he was also guided in answering the questions.
