First off, thanks to everyone for their great contributions in today’s quick get-together to discuss the Extensive Conversation Program at Chukyo University.
Here are some thoughts/notes that I hope will make this a better exercise for you and easier to incorporate in your class, as well as helping you and the students to understand things more clearly.
First, the main idea is simple: give the students more opportunities to speak English for practice.
This is accomplished by asking them to record a 10 minute conversation outside of class in English.
Teachers need to explain the process and where and how to get the materials.
Students will need:
1. The summary/notes sheet (from Common Room)
2. Blank cassette tapes (also in the Common Room)
3. A tape recorder (available with their School ID card (gakuseisho), from Room 14 – Gakuji Center)
You may need to explain or even show students where those things are.
The assignment is in 2 parts. Both require the students to tape a 10 minute conversation in English. You can suggest topics, or allow them to choose for themselves.
The assignment is basically (hopefully) 2 students meet, record their conversation – making notes either as they write or by listening to the recording, and then write a summary of what they discussed.
The following class period they exchange the Tape with another Team who will then listen to the tape, make notes about what the conversation was about, what was interesting about it, and possibly what other things they would like to know about what they just heard discussed. These notes are written on the Summary sheet in the section for Part B. Then they record themselves talking about those things.
The completed Summary sheets and tapes are then turned in to the teacher at the next class meeting.
I have found it best to only explain Step 1 of the assignment at the first, and then when they return to class the following week explain Step 2.
I usually divide the students into Groups. 4 is the optimum number. I do this randomly. Then each group will decide on 2 Teams from within their group. Those Teams then do Step 1 and at the following class exchange their tapes with each other only within their group. Then each Team performs Step 2 and hands in the completed summaries the following week of class.
At this time, the Teams can then exchange members to form new Teams still within their group. That is 1 and 2 can now be partners/team members with 1 and 3, and 2 with 4, and the process starts again immediately. The following cycle 1 can partner with 4 and 2 with 3 to keep each Team having new partners and hopefully new things to talk about.
So, as simply as I can think of to explain this it would be:
Step 1. Record the 10 minute conversation ==> write the summary
Step 2. Exchange the tapes with the other Team from their group ==> listen to the tape they receive ==> wrote notes, questions, comments about what they are listening to ==> record themselves discussing the conversation they just listened to.
If you need a copy of the Student Summary form, right click the link below and choose “Save” or “Save as” from the menu that pops up to save a copy directly to your computer.
http://www.wanisan.com/dloads/extensivespeaking.pdf
If you need other classroom documents/forms from Chukyo you can go here:
http://www.chukyoeibei.org/en/info.html
(updated to add Student ID *gakuseisho and links)