Today was a roaring success, as we held a Live Session between two classes, one at Merrilands Community Centre and the other in Broadway in the heart of Reservoir. Both groups comprised English as a second language (ESL) learners.
Tina and Jan and i came up with a way to use Skype to develop people’s language skills. Lately the students have been practising their descriptive skills, so we decided that each student would describe themselves over the skype phone, and the other group would guess who was speaking.
Each group had a set of photographs – of the people in the other class.
“I have dark hair, dark skin, and in the photograph i’m wearing a white headscarf.”
“Are you number 7, Maria?”
“Yes!” Applause all round.
There was plenty of laughter .. and not too much confusion; even though there were a few moments of garbled voice sounds, and not everyone remembered to hold the microphone close to their body.
Real listening .. because students were engaged in a real game, with real invisible colleagues. Fun plus success!
photo credit: feelmystic