English language contractions...

[Bubba Elvis XIV]

[onkko]

Thats not good way to educate finn, they push you in swamp with "haarakeppi" or find some space for you behind sauna

[Bubba Elvis XIV]

haarakeppi???? I have no clue what that is....google isn't helping me, stupid google.

[onkko]

haarakeppi???? I have no clue what that is....google isn't helping me, stupid google.

Well stick with "haara", you know like Y shaped stick. just proper to push you in swamp

[Bubba Elvis XIV]

Keppi I know...Hmmm...I shall get one and push people into the aurajoki. I don't know who...but I am sure any Turkulainen will do.

On a serious note:

Are there other disinhibitory exercises or tricks you regularly use?

Yeah, it's true...take your students to the pub and things roll. I personally don't but a few teachers do stuff with their students, have the lesson over lunch etc and it opens people up.

I'm quite lucky that my course coordinator is pretty good at matching the teacher to the group. I kinda have a reputation of being able to make people talk and open up (I still have 'bad' classes though). So I never have too much of a problem. There's a few things I do these days, like certain topics are just off limits until I know the group and try and really take on board what the students say so I can use those ideas for a future chat. Hard to say.
The only thing I try and do is use open questions. If the student is really bad, I try and use a few closed questions, warm them up, let them relax and then use open ones. I heard that's what psycho-thingy people do, but it's hard to think 'what did I just ask...oh, yeah...now an open question!'.

[Rosamunda]

Are there other disinhibitory exercises or tricks you regularly use?

Self-derision... telling them a story about how stupid I am (especially if it involves speaking Finnish) or anecdotes about things we have done. Quite often someone will chirp up and admit to having done something equally dumb.

Sometimes I walk in with Hesari (which everyone reads over breakfast/ on the bus) and ask them what the hell all the fuss is about on the front page. Or some article that I think might interest them... so they have to explain it all to me (cos I'm too stupid to understand Hesari).

One student (a beginner) who was really really lacking in confidence and eventually I found out she had 2 dogs and 3 cats, a bird and some fish etc etc so I took in some photos of my puppy. And I asked her lots of questions about training dogs (not sure if that helped her to process all her office paperwork but at least it got her talking).

Like Bubba says... sometimes it takes a long time to get inside them, but once you get the clues then it's a piece of cake (food always works as a topic of conversation).

I remember going to one class in a rush in the morning and really at a loss on how to kick-start the lesson. It was agonising. Then I turned on the radio and heard that Pavarotti had died (Yes!!!) - I think we talked about Living Legends and people who achieve greatness in their own life time bla bla. (Why did Michael Jackson have to die during the summer holidays... )

The groups I have had the biggest problems with are often the ones where the group is dysfunctional from the start (usually involving women). For some reason there are members of the group who don't want to be there, or don't want to be with a certain other person. When you walk into your first lesson you just don't know what the dynamics of the groups are and sometimes it takes a while to work it all out. Once or twice I have recommended that a student changes group. Companies sometimes try and stuff all kinds of people into one group (to save money) but don't think about the politics and stuff.

[Bubba Elvis XIV]

(Why did Michael Jackson have to die during the summer holidays... )

It's wrong, I know...but I wait for tragic events, always good for starting a class. War, Death, Famine, Pestilence...they're friends to me.

Yeah - One thing I have learned is to always talk about issues that the students know about, usually something that was in HS/YLE the same morning, night before. then they have the info / knowledge, they just need to find the words in English. It's not good to try and get a discussion with Finns about something that may be interesting (in their eyes too) but have no clue about. There's always that..."If I don't really know about something, I don't want to talk about it in case I look foolish" attitude that Finns can have.

Of course, there are excpetions, but I wait a few weeks before I drop in an article about an amazonian tribe that worship a man eating cabbage and are doing a musical about it in Cairo.

The groups I have had the biggest problems with are often the ones where the group is dysfunctional from the start (usually involving women). For some reason there are members of the group who don't want to be there, or don't want to be with a certain other person. When you walk into your first lesson you just don't know what the dynamics of the groups are and sometimes it takes a while to work it all out. Once or twice I have recommended that a student changes group. Companies sometimes try and stuff all kinds of people into one group (to save money) but don't think about the politics and stuff.

Why is it that women are often the biggest problem? It's really quite strange, men are usually so much more relaxed in a class. Most of my difficult students have been women and when they are men they usually deal with the situation in a more 'mature' manner e.g...talk to you after the class, then have some manly small talk, then it's done, over, move on.

People from higher up the company mixed with some dogs bodies can be a problem. One lot are scared to speak and look foolish in front of the low lives, the other lot are scared to speak and look foolish/show up their manager or say something to offend / annoy him.

Hastily thrashed out...I am late for the badger parade! GOAL!