Lately in culture class the games and activities after the lectures have been going really well. One game that I tried to review the culture of Australia and New Zealand was a board game. I got this idea from my mentor and friend at Ohio State while teaching Spanish. Many of my Chinese students had never even seen a board game so the experience of rolling the dice and moving the game pieces was fun in and of itself. All I did was make each space a different category and then have lists of questions for that category. The other students in the group were the judges to see if the answer was correct or not. If it was, the student could move the amount shown on the die. If it was incorrect, the student couldn't move forward.
The board game was an instant success and the students played it straight for 40 minutes. After they finished they just started playing again. Steve let me borrow a bag of dice and I used colored paperclips as game pieces. Although it took a little preparation to make the questions and set up the board, it was totally worth it. (Thanks Kristin!)
Another activity that worked well was reviewing for the final. To play this game I gave each student a question that could be on the final exam. They had about five minutes to find the answer and become an "expert" on that question. Then I arranged them into two lines facing each other and the students asked/answered their classmates questions. After about two minutes I would rotate the line so everyone would get a new question. It was pretty cool to see the students teaching and helping each other when someone didn't know the answer. It was also a good way to end a class and get everyone out of their seats since for the previous hour everyone had been sitting down and trying to pay attention.
A game that I got from Ken created an absolute sensation. The game was simple; it was a powerpoint that showed famous people from the different countries that we talked about in class. I divided the class into teams and made it into a competition. The students went NUTS. If the group was able to correctly identify the person, they earned point, if not, they earned zero points and another group could steal the chance. They are very into singers, actresses and actors and knew almost all of them. The people that caused the most shouting-jumping-out-of-seats-chaos? Michael Jackson, Michael Phelps, Michael Jordan and Madonna. It was a lot of fun! (Thanks Ken!)
Finally, the past few semesters I have struggled with a way to get my students to present/share information in front of the class effectively. Group projects have always been a disappointment here because the students just copy things off the internet and memorize it. There is no creative or personal thought and it's really boring for everyone else. This semester I decided to do skits which went really well. I gave each pair of students a topic that had to do with cultural differences. I also included some kind of article/book chapter that talked a little bit about that difference in Western culture compared with China. Some of the topics were: female attractiveness, male attractiveness, same-sex affection, pregnancy, tipping in restaurants, living with parents, work experience, educational experience, shaking hands etc.
I encouraged the students to be funny and create the skit in any way they wanted as long as they taught the class something about cultural differences. They had to perform for about three minutes and they couldn't use any notes. Meanwhile, the other students had to write down the main point of the skit and turn in their answers at the end of the class. The skits turned out great! I could tell that there was a lot of preparation involved, the students used natural English, props and even humor. The shyest students in class turned out to be some of the boldest and best performers when acting in front of the group.
It's a good thing that culture class is almost over because I'm running out of ideas. For my class that goes until late December I'm going to have a Christmas party and then show Dead Poet's Society. That's why they pay us the big bucks.
There are no famous people from New Zealand.
是的