Help! I have to put on a 'demo for adults at a company.. any ideas???

Question

Hi everyone,

I am an English teacher in China.

So far I have always taught children, and have always done demos (a short faux lesson to show potential students how we teach') for children also.

Well for some reason I have to do an hour demo at a company in front of a bunch of adult.. I am REALLY nervous as adults never want to play games.. and their level of English can greatly vary!!

Any good short lessons/demo ideas from experienced teachers???

I have already checked out daveseslcafe.com and still no good ideas... please help!!

Answer 1

You'd be surprised - adults do want to play games but in a different kind of way. I did English teaching for over 5 years to adults and children and both were fun in their own ways. My experience with teaching Chinese students are that they can be quite shy and will take a while to open up so I would stick to pair activities which will not be too scary in front of the whole class. Enjoy it and don't be scared!

Answer 2

Why don't you apply the same principles to them as you do with the kids and suggest they let their guard down and play as though they were kids? Play pretend! It is a great ice breaker and you could gear it to images rather than written words. Besides I am assuming you will be teaching children, and these adults are hiring you or something, so to show them what you normally do is appropriate!

I seem to recall the Chinese love our 'wacky' sense of humor and would probably appreciate that, especially if you used some kind of British history, landmarks etc within the 'lesson' and then applied that with the spoken word. You know, Trafalgar square, house of commons, London eye etc.

good Luck with it

Answer 3

50,000 people DIED there and you worry about demos?

Go unbury your fellow country men from the rubbles of ruins.

d**n is it always about you?

Answer 4

you look on the ESOL websites, the British counsel have a good one for people looking to learn english also IELTS is a source of material.

Answer 5

Depending on your degree of "risk" there's a game (an icebreaker, actually) that I've used exclusively with adult audiences -especially as a lead-in to the subject matter of collaboration, team work, and diversity.

The activity is called Spaghetti and Marshmellows and is a fun and fascinating activity that allows for adults to work together based on their experiences and competencies -often not recognized by our assumptions or what we read about them on paper (resume and bio's).

It's an activity that is woth considering -have fun!