Hi.

This isn't related to any on-going thread, but I thought I'd let you
know about a 'project' or experiment I'm trying out with a group
of "difficult" 15-year-olds. They were what you could term seriously
spoilt, demotivated youngsters - I mentioned them before, their class
was scheduled at the same time as a popular Venezuelan soap, and it
was a nightmare getting past the resentment.
Anyway, having arm-wrestled for a few months, we came to an agreement
around about Christmas, and decided to change the approach. I'm
supposed to follow a coursebook, so I had been alternating book and
dogme before Christmas, but said text - which shall remain nameless -
is the worst book I've ever had to battle with in a teen class, so I
spoke to some parents and got permission to relegade the thing to
homework status.
The class are all now fully involved and have made major progress at
school too - they STILL don't use 's' in the present simple, but
their self-expression, vocab, willingness to share, to speak in
English and their general motivation is a million % up on October.

This is what we do:
Every three weeks or so, they get into threes and come up with three
or four subjects they would be willing/keen to debate and work on. We
then put all the titles on the board and vote for the two most
popular. Where they've given a general area (eg sexism) we discuss
possible titles or ramifications, and choose which ones we want to
focus on. They go back to their threes and discuss possible arguments
and counter-arguments, which is when the board gets covered in vocab.
We then have a full blown debate on each subject, one the day of the
voting and the other a few classes later. Because they've chosen the
topics, they seem incredibly willing to express everything in
English, rather than rapid Seville Spanish.
The family background (money, politics...) and interests of these
kids are quite varied, and apart from the fifteen year-olds, there is
one 18 year-old medical student who has become the Doctor, our
resident expert in anatomical matters - fascinating for his younger
classmates....
Anyway, after the debate, they write a summary of what was said (in
class, me monitoring and helping, recycling vocab, pointing out the
missing 's's)then a paragraph expressing their opinion (usually at
home). The next class, they read their paragraph to a neighbour who
helps with errors, and reacts to the content. When they're happy with
both the summary and the paragraph, they hand their work in to one of
the kids in the class. When he/she has all the pieces of work,
they're handed to me for correcting. I then pass them back and they
copy them up in Word. They give me a floppy or email me the work.
This way we have a permanent record.
They've also chosen songs, scoured the web, and created their own
worksheet for the songs - gapfills and 'does he sing a or b' type
things. When they bring in a song and activity, they also bring in a
short bio on the singer.
Occasionally they bring in short pieces from the free newspapers, and
we look at them, this week translating Mrs. Beckham's top ten tips
for how to look fabulous (shop in New York and Japan etc. ahem),
which caused great mirth, and threw up a lot of vocab. Then they
wrote the Mrs Beckham Guide to Relaxation and made illustrated
posters with the information.
They've now decided to create a webpage and forum; one student is
going to take a load of photos and, using PhotoShop (or Suite?) make
a montage which she'll then send to another boy who's going to create
the page.

Exactly half the class have added me to their Messenger list, and
chat to me in English at night. Apparently, one boy has 'severe
learning disabilities' as a result of a condition which is to syntax
what dyslexia is to spelling, but you'd never know from his work, or
from the help he gives to his colleagues - in fact, I didn't know
until his Mum told me.
Apart from learning English, all those old gems, frequently about
sex, crop up because between me and the Doctor, they feel they get
decent answers. It's a far cry from what we were doing back in
Autumn, but it seems to work.
And the coursebook? They do that for homework, about once every four
classes. It reinforces their structural stuff in that they give the
coursebook grammar or vocab a go and use it in their other work. They
actually DO their homework, as they can see the value of it, rather
than see it as boring routine. We dedicate a whole class (90 Minutes)
to correcting one exercise if they want, because sometimes they
really do want to know what the heck the difference between the
perfect continuous tenses and perfect simple tenses is, cuz they want
to get through school exams.

Sorry, getting enthusiastic.
Have a good weekend.