Fifth day of July class

On the Saturday of the third weekend I try to do two things, I want to show students different materials I use to teach ESL and let me decide how to evaluate material. I hope they come up with the idea that books should have good pictures and color. Pages should also not be too busy and look inviting. I show them a variety of general text books, but also text books dealing with idioms, writing, and writing. I also show them text books that deal with specific areas that deal with English like Hotel English, Business English, and Restaurant English. I also show how I use other types of books like children's books, Math books, atlases, and election material. This is something students usually really enjoy.

I have my students do a take home test on the week before this last weekend. On the Saturday of the last weekend we review that test and use it as a way to review everything we covered the previous two weekends. The test usually takes three hours for students to complete. Some students are not native speakers and those students take longer to complete the test. I take 2 hours to review the test to ensure everyone understands what we covered during the course. The bonus question for this test is, How should this sentence be punctuated: The panda eats shoots and leaves. That always leads to discussion.

This is also the day we discuss getting a job. How to write a resume and how to do a cover letter. I tell the students that when they send a resume they should send it as a PDF file with a picture attached to it. That way the receiver can't change their resume when they get it and most schools want a picture with the resume. If a student wants individual help they can email me and I will tell them what I think of their resume. If they know what country they want to go I tell them if I know someone teaching in that country right now and have them contact me if they want help in finding a job.

Then we started with the students' final presentations. Today we had 5 presentations. They did presentations on movies, colors, giving directions, foods, and frequency adverbs. They all were very good and the students did much better than they did the first two weekends. The time went very quickly and everyone had fun. I can't wait for the 9 more tomorrow!