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Topics, activities for Conversation Group | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| FedericoBoston Newbie United States Joined 3759 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 9 18 January 2014 at 4:02pm | IP Logged |
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Hello everyone / ciao a tutti,
New to this site and hope this is the right forum to ask for suggestions. I've already read the very helpful http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=29045&PN=0&TPN=1. I take part in a weekly, one-hour Italian group at a local library, with usually 6-10 people present. We range in ability from CEFR A1 to B2, with a couple native speakers but they are many decades removed from living in Italy (and still have some dialect!). There is no designated instructor or tutor. It would help us greatly to get ideas from this community, about topics or exercises for part of each meeting. With a group of this size, perhaps games like Twenty Questions would work. Or maybe exercises, going around the table, to use certain verbs or to answer a question like "when you travel, do you visit museums and why or why not?" My objective is to give us some structure and help us stay in the foreign language as much as possible. I can understand that some activities could be harder than others, given the wide range of proficiency in the group. Many thanks for suggestions and links. Federico (a.k.a. Fred) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4484 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes  Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 2 of 9 18 January 2014 at 7:18pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Federico and welcome to HTLAL!
This may not be exactly what you are looking for, but I use this link below for ideas for conversation starters. It has some really good questions to get a conversation going. It might be useful to your group: Conversation Starters Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5186 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 3 of 9 19 January 2014 at 1:35am | IP Logged |
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You can look for ice breaker games like Never Have I Ever. If the group isn't shy you can try some improv (maybe go over some target vocab to try to incorporate first) or turn the conversation group into a debate club (which is more advanced). I've found that the Oxford Picture Dictionary is really useful when tutoring in English and it might be helpful to have something similar around for the more beginning speakers so they don't need to break into English all the time to understand.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6392 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 9 19 January 2014 at 3:43am | IP Logged |
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This thread is for essay topics, but they should also be good ideas for discussion.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| FedericoBoston Newbie United States Joined 3759 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 9 20 January 2014 at 4:58pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5170 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 6 of 9 20 January 2014 at 7:32pm | IP Logged |
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I ran my meetup for quite a while and learned a lot. I also occasionally attend a meetup in a city about an hour away. I don't think topics, games or activities help. I found that simply having one rule "Spanish only" and letting everything else happen was the way to go. We meet in a nice place where people can get a beer and/or food if they want to. It is comfortable, casual and relatively quiet. Everyone just socializes and talks. There are a couple of the more senior members that always try to reach out to the newcomers to make sure they have a good time, but other than that we don't do much and it works great.
The risk of doing activities is that some people will not like them. Some people will get very nervous. It also gets old after a few meetups. When I first started the meetup group we did activities and "introduce yourself" types of things. Some people get really into it, but others obviously did not want to participate. Sometimes a group member will bring something to talk about. That is fine. One guy brought pictures of his new house. Another woman brought a powerpoint presentation she is going to use in her Spanish class. Those things were great. So, I don't think topics are bad, but I'd be careful not to underestimate the value of just having nice casual conversations. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4804 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 7 of 9 21 January 2014 at 12:50am | IP Logged |
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I find James29's advice to be the jewel. I've experienced some attempts on conversation classes or even structured conversation opportunities (with natives included) of such kind a few times. And the risk of the structure not suiting everyone is quite huge and I've always learnt the most and had the best time when we were just speaking.
I would add just one thing: time. I think it is important to choose the meetup time and place conveniently so that anyone who wants can stay for several hours. If your library allows you that (and making some tea, coffee etc.), it is awesome. I am one of those people who need some warm up time and I think we are not a rare species :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| blauw Tetraglot Groupie Belgium Joined 5167 days ago 46 posts - 111 votes Speaks: English, Flemish*, French, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 9 21 January 2014 at 7:35pm | IP Logged |
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Another vote for James29's approach, from experience. One thing that also works well (although, of course, not everyone should have to participate) is board games, particularly Scrabble in the L2. Even beginners can take part.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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