No, it sadly wasn't me who said it, Winston Churchill did. Yet, I'm sure these very words resonate with you just as much as they do with me, and resonate in a hurtful, sad way. Ironically, chances are most of you, dear readers, are, just like me, first of all a teacher, by profession, and/or vocation. Are we then, according to Churchill, doomed to an eternity of people disliking us for what we do, teach? Not when you make your teaching about learning, and this is exactly my agenda for this blog and my professional life. When I am to create a bio/ a profile, I always have the urge to write 'a keen learner', rather than mention my experience as a teacher. It is the culture of learning that I long for, root for and subscribe to. A learner-centered, brain-friendly environment that nourishes motivation, enthusiasm, autonomy, responsibility and the joy of academic discovery and personal growth. Baby steps, by the day, I strive to become less of a 'sage on the stage...
I have been looking for a way to spice up a bit the class I give in DP1 as introduction to speeches- both oral and written (paper 1). Then it dawned on me- why not get the students move and learn about the structure, language, rhetorical appeals rotating the stations in pairs? I tried and it worked very well- have a look at the stations and the sample answers:) . The class is designed for 5 stations, but there is also an optional one on extra linguistic features- I’ve put them in my google disc as pdfs, but you can also create QR codes for them so that you don’t need to print the activities. As for the class itself, you can ask students to compete against each other in their pairs, and check their worksheets yourself, or allow them accces to the sample key to encourage self-assessment or peer-assessment. What needs to be done at the end is a wrap-up session on the text type that speech is- one idea might be ask students to elaborate on the titles of each s...