Teaching Social Skills

This week we had another wonderful class.  Monday morning started off with a little 'coffee social hour.'  The ladies in class have the chance to practice greetings with each other and asking their classmates about what they did over the weekend.  This activity works on a couple of important skills.  First, how to ask and answer in the past tense.  Second, the ladies learned a nice pragmatic trick of adding the phrase 'And you?' to the end of almost any answer when they are in a dialogue.  This allows them to keep the conversation going and they don't have to worry about how to formulate an entire sentence.  If they are talking to a native English speaker, they may very well have just extended the conversation by several minutes as we sure like talking about ourselves!
 
The other major activity during class was a good discussion about our favorite recipes and the indredients that go into the meals.  We talked about how to measure the ingredients and then the ladies set to work on what is the beginning of a recipe book.  Each student wrote out the ingredients needed for the meal, and for homework went home and confirmed the items.  We will compile and 'publish' their ideas to share in class.   I can't wait to see what they bring in!  And I'm also curious what they will decide to call the book.
 
The recipe book project is more than an overnight activity - it will take a few weeks as they finish learning the necessary vocabulary and sentence structures. Next week, the students will be talking about the steps to make a meal.  First you do x, then y ... and of course there is all the vocabulary that goes along with this.  We will do a few "how you make a ____" demonstrations.  Always a fun activity!  Actually that makes me think about all of the YouTube videos online with demonstrations in that vein.  I think I will close out the blog here so I can go find a couple of those videos to share with the class next week!