EYE CONTACT ACTIVITY

 

Shared by Begoña Andrés:

Paul’s Seligson’s lectures have given me the opportunity to remind me of the goodnesses of pairwork, which I have always used, but he has forced me to focus on 3 clues: small amounts of input, short periods of time and the need to check pair-work; and above all EYE CONTACT.

So this is how I have worked the Present Perfect Continuous with my 4th year ESO students these days:

• First I worked with all of them showing some pictures from a Wordwall with different people and emotions and I asked “What have they been doing?”.

Instead of asking directly from the wordwall I exemplified what they had to do. I also wrote the structure they had to practise on the blackboard.

• Then I put them in pairs (not the same ones as the previous day, of course) to answer the same question “What have they been doing?” but with different pictures. They could have a look at the structure on the blackboard, however they had to look at their partner while they were talking.

• Finally, they shared their answers, their predictions of what the people in the pictures had been doing, they shared with the rest of the students. At that stage the strongest ones argued more but the weakest enjoyed as well and had already had their opportunity to speak in the pair work.

I found this pair activity and point of view really useful to improve speaking.