Language Learning Centre – Conversation Club 11/8

This week’s topic for our conversation club was “Your Hometown”.  We only had four students this time as many of them had the same teacher who was sick and had to cancel classes for the day. We had Yuka and Ran, who were Japanese, as well as Talita and Maria, who were from Brazil. They were intermediate students. The good thing with such a small turnout was that we were able get to know them a little bit and had a lot of speaking practice with each. The topic was generated from last lesson’s feedback, as we had a student mention that she enjoyed learning about different cultures through our conversation clubs.

At first when we had only one student, I asked some icebreaking questions while waiting for others to join. We talked about Tokyo briefly and how long she has been here. When more students joined, we started with the first activity which was having the students talk about which part of the world they are from – the city, country, and continent. Then we proceeded to the breakout room activity (but stayed in the main room since we had a small group). We talked about the languages they speak in their countries, festivals and holidays they celebrate, and some differences between their hometown and Canada. We all learned how to say ‘thank you’ in Portuguese and Japanese. We did a poll to see whether they miss their countries and one of them said no because she just came in September! They had a good time describing differences in culture and were able to answer in detail when I asked them what they miss the most. The students also talked about the activities they enjoy doing in their hometown and what their city or country is famous for. They were given categories to choose from (Food, Sports, and Brand) and a couple of them picked food while some others picked brand. At the end we talked about which country we would visit if we were to travel now, and there was also an exit ticket where they could draw one thing about their country.

It was very easy to have everyone participate, given the circumstances. Feedback from the assistant teacher was that the lesson was very organized and that we kept the students engaged. I liked that me and Matthew did a great job with pacing and ensuring we had enough content even though we had only four students. I’m glad I prepared questions to ask and had an idea of extended topics to talk about, such as at one point I asked the students about how the metro system or buses are like in Japan and Brazil, when the conversation naturally led to it, or asking if they are planning to visit soon when talking about what they missed most about their hometown.