Back to the Future.

This week my goal was to instruct the students on how to conjugate verbs into their past and future tenses without using the progressive verb form.  I began class by asking the students which particular verbs that they wanted to discuss (open ended questions), then I wrote their replies on the WB.

Since many of my adult students tend to have low English skills, they are usually slow to respond.  I am unsure if they initially don't understand what I am asking of them, they are too shy to respond, or both. When dealing with a lack of interaction from my students, I usually start the ball rolling by giving the class a "fun" example as to what I type of answer I am gunning for. I will spare you the audio, but the example I gave was the verb "sing".  I then started to sing in front of the class.  By allowing the students to witness me torture a song, they seemed to become a bit  more relaxed in class, and as a result, student replies started to flow more quickly.

Some of the verbs that the students gave were:
dance,
read,
cook,
and one student even yelled out "kiss" (bless their hearts)

With the selected verbs listed on the WB in one column, I asked the class what the past tense verb form of each verb was, then I wrote the correct answer in a neighboring column.  This "dialogic" approach is different to the  "monologic" style that I previously used.  In the past I would simply write the past tense verb form on the board without asking the class what they were. which obviously would not allow the students a chance to figure out the answers on their own.  I do have to admit that after incorporating the "dialogic" approach this week, I was a bit surprised by how many of the irregular verbs that the students actually did know.   Some of the irregular verbs were given the  regular verb past tense "ed" ending, but when this happened I only had to say "nope", and often times the students quickly corrected themselves.  For example,  the verb "eat", was conjugated incorrectly to "eated" in all of my classes, but once I said "nope", the students would give the correct answer of "ate".

After the all the verbs were correctly conjugated into their past tense form, I wrote "What DID you do last Friday?" on the WB.  By specifically using the word "DID", I was trying to indicate that the students should not use the progressive "ing" ending. Students were then instructed to ask the classmate sitting behind them "What did you do last Friday?". The students being asked the question then had to reply so that the rest of the class could hear their answer.  In the past, if students made mistakes ( I driving last Friday), I would immediately correct them,  however this week when a mistake was made, I just said "nope", and then allowed the students to work out the mistake for themselves.  I also used the same teaching methods for teaching the future tense verb form in the 2nd half of the class..

 I never realized how often my teaching style was obstructive and how often it was constructive. I often worried about the time restraints of getting the book finished (as instructed by my bosses) as opposed to giving students enough time to discover answers on their own.  Through the weekly reading assignments however, I discovered useful methods which A) seemingly made my classes run better, B)  were non intrusiveness to my class, and C) I will continue to use throughout my teaching career.  I believe Dick Allwright described this as Exploitative Practice.