About this class in general

The idea of this class is to allow you maintain your high level of English by speaking about things that are interesting to you.

You will typically read one or two newspaper articles as preparation for discussion. Also, you will bring an item to class each week and the first part of class will be devoted to discussion relating to that item.

Newspaper Article

At the beginning of the term I will hand out some articles, and will get your ideas on the other ones that will be chosen for class. Generally we will have some humorous articles, some articles on Japan, and lots of human interest or social issue related articles. Nothing too controversial, perhaps, but each article should spark a good discussion.

How to prepare for class
When you read the article, please mark any interesting or confusing words or phrases, and think of some topics you would like to discuss in class. Part of the discussion will be a classwide discussion on the language, but most of the discussion will be in small groups where you will compare your thoughts on the article and related issues or topics.

At the least you should have some ideas on what you hope to discuss; if you have the time to do some extra research or find materials to bring to class to supplement your discussion that would be great.

Conversation Piece
Another part of the class is the "conversation piece". Each week I'll ask you to bring some object to class to talk about. For example, I may have told you one week: "Next week, bring a CD that you like to class."

When we begin class the next week, you will be in a small group (3 or 4 students) and will talk about the CD you brought and the CDs that the other members of your group happened to bring.

Conversation pieces work well for native speakers when they want to find something to talk about (often in terms of "to break the ice") and from the past meetings of our class I can say that they work very well as conversation starters. Please think of an item that you think would be fun to use and let me know, I'll try to work it into our class.

Movie Scenes
Another activity we do is to watch a very short scene from a movie. There are many ways that we can use film as an item for discussion, for example: your reaction to the scene; a similar incident that happened to you or that you have heard about; describing the emotions or inner thoughts of the characters on screen; cultural comparison and so on and so on. I typically show movies that have subtitles in English, and it is good practice to read the dialogue as you hear it and watch the scene.

Movie scenes work well, I think because we view scenes from many different kinds of movies each semester and there is so much cultural information in movies. Some scenes are so good that I like to re-use them. If I use the same scene as I did in a previous class I will be sure to suggest a different discussion topic.

Notes

• We will change groups at least once or twice each class so that you can meet everyone often.

• If you have any questions at all, please let me know by email.

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