Now I’ve done quite a lot of international workshops it’s a lot less stressful not having to worry about what things to present and what things will go down well. As long as I start slow, take plenty of questions and do lots of the songs & games pretty much everything seems to work great!
Today’s group of teachers were from the ELTA-Rhine group and were fantastic. In the first few minutes we had quite a few “Oh my goodness, what on Earth is this?” type of expressions on people’s faces as they realised how much moving up and down there would be, but by the end of it I could move back and just left everyone to get on with things as they were indeed nicely genkified!
Last year near Hamburg was also great, and one of the teachers today came all the way from Frankfurt. Next year it would be very nice to do a tour of all of Germany! The teachers are great, the materials work so well and there are so many great cities to visit here. If anyone could help set some workshops up I’d love to hear from you!
Content wise it was a basic 3 hour introduction, mainly based on the “What would you like to see today?” question posed in the string game. Then we went into What’s your name? ( I would have loved to do the Genki German version, but English was the request of the day!). Then How are you? and How are you Monster game?. Do you have any pets? came up to show how to introduce new language in a game form ( this time sticky fingers), rather than having to pre-teach it. Then the Balloon game in the alphabet race version and shiritori versions.
After the break we had a request for the Good Morning song, then Left & Right and Thank you song to finish with.
We covered most of the Online Workshop Videos, but as is often the case in Europe the teachers were not only wanting activities but were also asking lots of great questions.
Overall though it was a great day. I’m really happy that Genki English works so well in Europe, both with the language content and the activities, and the songs seem so universal. There are quite a few teaching systems around over here, but Genki English is pretty different to say the least! A lot of the teachers were also pleasantly surprised that I haven’t done it as a “you can only use this if you pay a huge monthly fee” system. All you need is the CD 6 pack and a little enthusiasm and off you go! This may be a little stupid on my part, but getting the word out there is the main thing I want to achieve.
And thank you everyone so much for today. You were a great group and you made me feel very welcome. Email me anytime you have any questions or have things I can help with. And if anyone else in Germany, Europe, or anywhere else in the World for that matter, can get a group of teachers together for a workshop you won’t regret it! Just drop me a line and we’ll work something out.
PS. All the lesson plans are online, but if you want something to print out and read, have a look at the booklet I did for the Hamburg workshop last year!
Quite a few of the teachers last week also taught Business English. A lot of Genki English style games are actually used by businesses in in-house training ( I learnt a few good ideas on the course I did at Arthur Andersen). At the end of last week’s workshop teachers were saying “Well, yes it does look like only kids could do this. But then again we were all sceptical adults only a couple of hours ago and now look at us!”
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Giving the kids marbles or counters and taking them off them as they misbehave. ( small groups )
In Japan last year there was the idea of having a “Japanese stick”. If anyone uses Japanese when they shouldn’t they get given the Japanese stick. They can only get rid of it by passing it to someone else who speaks Japanese! Of course you can adapt this for any other country you happen to be teaching in.
