My name is Emmanuel K. Manimtim but here in F2F, most of the students call me “Teacher Em”, Emanh or just plainly “EM” with my colleagues. I’m originally from Cavite City but I’ve been living for almost 20 years here in Tagaytay City. I have been teaching for more than 9 years as an ESL teacher, I started with Koreans, Chinese and now Japanese, more than 2 and a half years ago, I started teaching for F2F, still here and still enjoying my work. I handle Speaking classes and Listening classes generally. I also enjoy organizing trips and sometimes parties for the students.
What I’m going to talk about with you today is one of the types of classes that I handle here at F2F, “Speaking Classes”. It is divided into different categories:
- Explanation
- Topic
- Debate
- Q and A
All speaking classes have similar format and have similar purpose, it is to give the student practice for “SPEAKING”. Originally, 70% of the total class time is for the student to talk and around 30% of the total class time is for me to explain or ask questions. During the class, I intend to try and make the student speak or share his/her ideas and opinion about certain topics. I also share 3 things with my students every class time.
First, Vocabulary (synonyms) – Whenever the student gives an example I try to think of synonyms (words that have similar meanings but different spellings and pronunciation ex: pretty, beautiful, cute) and share it with the student, this gives the student options on how to use the different synonyms for their sentences.
Second, Option Sentences – These sentences are based on the example sentences or statements that the student tries to say during the class. Combining with the synonyms that I share, I try to make more than 2 or more sentences which have the same idea, giving my students the option of expressing themselves in more ways than what they usually use.
Third, Expressions – These are phrases or words that native speakers are very fond of using and very common in everyday conversation. These expressions are a good way to express themselves without saying too much but still saying the entire meaning in a shorter manner. For students to use such expressions will give them more confidence in speaking English.
Now, let’s try to talk about the details of one of the classes under “Speaking Class” (note: The guidelines that I have written here is not the official format for the classes conducted that all teachers must follow thus, these are the things that I normally do every day in class and has shown improvement to most students.)
Explanation – This is a speaking class which has the foundation of reading, understanding, vocabulary words, organization of thought, outlining and of course speaking.
It starts with choosing a topic that the teacher and the student decided to discuss, the class starts as the topic is read first by the student and should be guided by the teacher with a few things to check: intonation, pronunciation, punctuations, stops/pauses and reading pace.
EXAMPLE:
2nd , the teacher should note the errors or mistakes the student made while reading and kindly give the corrections. This will serve as a warm up and a gauge on how much and how fast the student can read the topic.
3rd, the teacher should read it one more time for the student to take notes on what he/she needs to remember. After which , the student should read again, It is important for me to discuss the vocabulary words used and expressions that are new or not common for the student for further understanding.
4th, the teacher should give ample time for the student to understand the topic and try to explain it on his/her own (I always allow the usage of dictionary), the teacher should write down comments on what details the student has given, the teacher should also suggest words, sentences or even expressions that would be better for the student’s explanation.
5th, Discussion follows about the things and details that are not yet clear for the student to make sure that everything is clear, give the student a chance to ask questions and to clarify things about the topic once done.
Lastly, the teacher should give time for the student to re-organize his/her thoughts and re-explain the topic, it is a must that the teacher should be taking notes on the student’s explanation, give corrections or comments on how to improve more.
It must be clear to the student that giving an explanation and giving a summary are two different things,
“summary “ is the student’s understanding of the topic or the shorter version of the topic while “explanation” talks about the complete and accurate details of the topic.
That’s all for today, I’ll be talking about the other types classes on my next blog, I wish that with this you will have an idea of how we conduct the “Explanation” (Speaking Class). I would like to invite you to check our website and get more details about our school, hope to see you very soon in my class! Have a great day!
