Almost no teacher of adult learners would stand in front of her classroom, take out the crayons and proceed to tell students to get out a sheet of paper and draw pictures of challenging vocabulary...
However last week when I noticed the verbs look at/look for/look after being consistently used incorrectly in our conversation, this is exactly what I resorted to.
However last week when I noticed the verbs look at/look for/look after being consistently used incorrectly in our conversation, this is exactly what I resorted to.
Normally, I would have reached for the computer, Google and PowerPoint (my dearest friends) but last week I was actually in a classroom with a chalkboard, not a whiteboard let alone a computer and projector and none of them had their laptops. I kid you not.
Baffled... I still had to make my learners see the difference.
There is a good reason we drew as kids - that whole spending time thinking about concepts and then creating something out of those thoughts marks the brain in ways that receiving oral explanations never will and we shouldn't ever let those skills go to waste just because we're working with adults.
Step 1
Whenever you notice a group of words with similar meaning but they're not quite the same / a set of common errors between English and the students' native language / phrasal verbs that have distinct meanings first talk about what is wrong in their conversations: give or elicit an explanation.
Step 2
Get your students to draw cartoons demonstrating the differences.
Step 3
Encourage your students to share their drawings with each other.
That's it: have fun!
Best,
Karenne
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