BTS Industriel -- Listening exercises & Discussion About Obligations

Last week's lesson went pretty well, so I thought I would give it a little share. Our subject of the day was obligation, so we focused mostly on the phrases, "you must + verb", "you have to" and "you mustn't" or "you can't".

My second-year BTS students here in France started out by listening to this text, between ESL-Lab's Randall and his daughter. I liked this text because it talks about possibility (can/can't) and obligation (you have to). I prepared this grid to help the students with the listening exercise:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday

The students were asked to listen to the script and write the daughter's obligations and activities in the grid with times, if possible. What is confusing is that the daughter starts off by asking if she can go see the movie on Wednesday so students immediately start to write "Go to the movies" on Wednesday, only to find out that her father says no. As the dad and the daughter discuss what needs to be done and negotiate the daughter's freedom, have your students write as many possibilities as they can hear. Then discuss it as a group, writing down the different obligations and explaining the ones they missed (maybe even listening to the tricky parts again) to give them something to visualize. I also took a moment to point out that they are American, and we know this because they talk about "movies" and "soccer", and not "cinema" and "football". 

Next, we continued with the theme of obligation by looking at some warning signs. 

I started out by asking the class where they could see these kinds of signs. Then, I had the students volunteer to make sentences. For example, where it says, "Danger: no smoking", a student would say something like, "you mustn't smoke at school," or "it's forbidden to smoke in public places." We continued onward practicing the "you mustn't" and "you can't" structures until all signs had been discussed.

Next, the students listened to this short text  about which rules you have to follow when you visit a national park. The woman talks about 4 rules which I had the students write down, and she ends the audio by talking about the consequences. Once students had identified the four rules and the consequences, we moved on to our speaking exercise. 

In groups of three, I gave the students one of the following places: 

The City Zoo

A Textile Factory

A Pharmacy

The Public Hospital

ABC Construction Site

GoodFoods Supermarket

A Hair Salon

A Shopping Mall 

I asked the groups to prepare ten rules that either employees, customers or visitors (depending on the place) have to follow, and then to think of appropriate consequences. They had about 20 minutes to brainstorm and write their ideas while I walked around and answered questions, and once everybody had finished they presented group by group, sharing their rules and consequences. 

A First-Lesson Lesson Plan

My go-to first lessons typically involve introductions. It's a useful skill for just about everybody and it gives the teacher the opportunity to get a feel for the class from the very first day. 

With my professional students, we'll usually start with formal introductions and introducing a partner, practicing structures like, "this is so-and-so. He's responsible for..." using key verbs for business people. With my BTS students though, I wanted to do something differently.

With all of my BTS students, 1st and 2nd years alike, I have them write their name and stick it on their desk to help me learn their names. Every week they automatically get them out, and every week I learn a few more names! (I have about a hundred students...) 

Another classroom management tip is that I'll choose the first volunteer, and once they have given their answer (or whatever I have asked for), I'll let them choose who goes next. This way, it's as if they are "rewarded" for participating, and it motivates more students to volunteer from the get-go because they want to be able to "choose their destiny" in a sense -- they'd rather go first then randomly be picked during the mix. 

Here are my ideas for successful first lessons! 

For my 2nd year students:

A fun start: Two truths and a lie! 

I had each student write a short introduction (hi, my name is, I'm X years old, I live in...) and then end their introduction with two truths and a lie. Then, the class had to react -- "I think X is a lie." When the class finds the lie, the student sits down. This is a nice way to get to know some facts about the class. 

Just because it's the first day doesn't mean we can't get straight to work, so then we did a listening exercise taken from the BBC: Entrepreneurs: BBC English Express. 

Because the text is only a minute long, we could listen to it a number of times before discussing, and then listen again when nobody in the class could answer my general questions. 

I had each student take notes about the four speakers (one narrator and three people being interviewed). Their goal was to be able to summarize what each person said: what do they want to do, and why? 

Then, once everybody had the answers and an overall understanding of the text, I asked them to brainstorm and to write their own response to this question:

An investor agrees to give you 100k€ to start a business. What is your plan? (Think about the who/what/when/where/why/how). 

After 15-20 minutes of writing, I let the students present following the tip given above -- I chose the first one, and then after that they choose whoever they want to go next. For this exercise, I had them stand up in front of the class. Most students only spoke for about 30 seconds, but that is a great start! 

For my 1st year students:

I had them start pretty much the same way: introductions and two truths and a lie. Then, I had them play the game "find somebody who", where they had to ask the right question using "be" or "do" as an auxiliary. When they finished the exercise, we went over it as a class, correcting their sentence structure and learning things about each other. I also took advantage of this opportunity to ask the students (as a group) other questions: When is your birthday? Do you have any brothers or sisters? Where were you born? What other languages can you speak? 

Find someone in the class who:

 Has a birthday in December   ________________________________

Was born in the same month as you ___________________________

Likes pizza   ______________________________________________

Has a pet ________________________________________________

Was born outside this country   ______________________________

Likes listening to rock music   ________________________________

Wants to travel to Australia   _________________________________

Has a sister   _____________________________________________

Has no brothers or sisters ___________________________________

Doesn’t like tomatos   ______________________________________

Plays basketball   _________________________________________

Favorite color is green   ____________________________________

Loves English   ___________________________________________

Speaks another language ___________________________________