Hello Monitors

It is sometimes difficult to come up with interactive activities for conversational practice. Since every class is different, it is sometimes difficult to come up with activites that will promote student engagement. Don't worry, your fellow monitors got you!!!

Throughout the years, the monitors have been compiling a list of activities and useful tips that will definitely make your conversation classes more interesting and engaging.

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 Useful Tips

• Learning through music

Who doesn't like music? Many students show their enthusiam in learning through music. The activity that was most preferred by previous students is the fill in the blanks activity. Basically, the students are handed the lyrics of the song in which some of the vocabulary is missing. Students are asked to listen to the music and fill in the blanks. This is a perfect opportunity for them to practise their listening skills, grammar and vocabulary. The LyricsTraining website allows you to obtain song lyrics, and allows editing. It has been extensively used by our French monitors. Click here to access the website.

• Learning through games

A good way to encourage class involvement in conversational practice is to conduct interactive group work through games.  Fun games for French conversation classes can be found here.

• Learning through podcasts

A good way to learn new vocabularies (apart from revising class notes) is to listen to people speaking the language. Many students showed interest in podcasts and claimed that they were useful in learning vocabularies and sentence structure, while listnening to native speakers. There are many podcasts on YouTube, just waiting to be put into action.

• Free self learning website

Many students show interest in learning new languages ASAP. They are interested in learning as much vocabulary as possible so they can have a normal conversation. One useful website is Duolingo. This website is free and consists of step-by-step tutorials for mastering many languages, including, French, Spanish, German and Russian. Click here to access the website.

• La crème de la crème

Over the years, our monitors have compiled lots of successful activities for conversation classes in binders at the DLC. There are various types of resources for French and Spanish conversation classes. We also have German and Russian resources in Google Drive.

Monitors: do not forget to have a look at these materials for inspiration.