ACTIVITIES THAT SUCK AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT THEM
It happens a lot. You do some allegedly 'fun' activity the book recommends and it's like slamming into a wall while drunk. In a Camaro. The class grinds to a halt, students sitting and grimacing, occasionally making a tortured utterance in English. They begin making obviously scornful comments in their native language and sending SMS messages to their buddies on their phones.
How to avoid this? Obviously you can abandon an activity in mid-stream, as it were, but you'd be much wiser to spot these useless activities from the jump and either alter them or skip doing them entirely.
Spotting them takes but a bit of a practiced eye, and here are some pointers. The examples given here are from REAL books, by the way, but I won't call them by name. So sue me.
StuPiD AcTIViTY #1: The book offers up a reading about a couple who split up when they were young and meet again 15 years later. They both seem to have a lot of regrets, but can't quite bring themselves to talk about them when they meet.
The target language is wishes in the past and 3rd conditional sentences (about the unreal past.) After reading the story, the activity tells you to put the students in pairs and have them re-enact the meeting of the couple, one taking the role of the man, the other of the woman. This time they should tell each other how they really feel. "I wish we hadn't split up. If you hadn't left me, I would have been a good husband." Etc.
CoMmenTS: JESUS CHRIST! Yeah that sounds comfortable -- making students who don't speak English well and maybe don't know each other well pretend to be long-lost lovers. Never mind the fact that you might well have two guys talking to each other, too, or (more likely) two girls, since there's rarely an equal number of men and women in the class. Role plays in general are good ways to kill a class, in my experience, unless they're something simple or you have very capable and enthusiastic and outgoing students.
HoW to Fix IT: Well, the basic idea is fine, but just abandon the role-play element. Tell the pairs to make sentences about everything the couple wishes. "Bob wishes that bitch hadn't left him." "She wishes she had some hot cock, " Challenge them to make twenty sentences, or have a contest to see who can make the most, or something like that. Problem solved.
STuPiD ActIvITy #2: The book prefaces a unit about film with a quiz about films. No problem in and of itself except the questions are things like: "What year was GONE WITH THE WIND released?" and "Who directed THE GODFATHER" and "Name three films that Martin Scorsese has directed" and "What is Woody Allen's favorite city?" Book wants you to put the students in pairs, ask each other the questions, and then have a contest to see which group answered the most questions correctly.
CoMMenTS: Well, that's a swell idea and all, except almost undoubtedly NONE OF YOUR STUDENTS ARE GOING TO BE ABLE TO ANSWER ANY OF THE QUESTIONS. I mean probably your average group of American or British 15 - 20 year olds wouldn't be able to, so why are you expecting a group of foreigners to? The might have heard of and even seen some of the films, but they certainly won't know anything about directors or years of release, and probably won't remember much about films from more than a few years ago. And constantly getting questions wrong will be boring and demoralising.
HOW to FIx It: Well, you could make your own quiz, about popular films of the last few years, with really easy questions. "Who starred in TITANIC?" and "How many TERMINATOR films have their been?" and so forth. Or just skip the whole thing entirely and ask them to talk about the last few films they've seen and what they thought and so forth. As in my MAKE THE FUCKERS TALK tips. This is a good thing to remember about quizes involving any topic, cultural, historical, etc -- the questions should be extremely easy. And still the students won't be able to answer most of 'em, believe me.
StuPiD AcTIViTY #3: The book wants you to practice modal verbs of probability -- i.e., This must be your pen, or I might have herpes, or She can't be married, I fucked her last night! The books wants you to draw some scribbles on the board and have the students do so also, and then talk about them. As in, "This might be a lion." "This couldn't be a flying saucer, it's too square."
COmmenTS: For fuck's sake! What are these scribbles going to look like other than a bunch of scribbles? What kind of imaginative leap is required here? A considerable one, that a bunch of harried businesspeople and university students aren't going to be able to make.
HoW to FiX iT: You could draw something on the board and show part of it -- cover part of it with paper or something -- and ask students what it might be, couldn't be. That's kind of a waste of time though, really. Better to have a large collection of pictures handy. You could draw some yourself, or just cut out some from old newspapers and magazines. Pictures from obscure news stories are good, where something is happening that is not immediately identifiable -- ask where it might be, what the people might be doing or feeling, etc. Have a lot of pictures and have 'em work in pairs and you'll get a decent amount of sentences out of them.
FinAL NoTES: In short beware of role plays, beware of assuming your students know anything beyond the most mundane and recent, and beware of your students having imaginations. Any activities involving these things should be regarded with the utmost caution.
Now go get 'em.