Ideas for Hosting Foreign-Language Conversation Groups

[oliandy]

Sorry that this is a question that's addressed to those of us who teach languages (or are learning them and attend conversation groups). I am having bad luck posting this question in my relatively small field -- just two replies so far--so I thought I'd tried a larger audience

Comments

[rabswom]

For the record, I tend to hate games in the context of language learning. They tend to make me shut down. But I have found conversation groups to be fairly useful. I've always liked it when there's a specific topic that we're talking about (perhaps a broader topic or a specific article on something) and I've found it helpful when I've been asked to research possible useful vocabulary on the topic before the conversation group meets. So, if we're talking about 'alternative energy,' each person in the group has researched possible vocab on alternative energy on their own. Then, when we all come together, we spend the beginning of the meeting comparing notes -- discussing the vocab we found and the context it was used in. Then, perhaps we talk about an article that we all read or perhaps we watch a video or an interview on the news on the topic and then talk about it. There's always a certain degree of summary at the beginning. It helps if people will take sides/positions -- sometimes those can be assigned.

Are there Russian soap-operas that you can get ahold of? I found those really useful for Arabic and it was fairly easy to get people talking about the plot of the soap and the characters. Then sometimes we'd do some mild role playing where we'd have to have conversations about the things going on in the soap 'as' the characters in the soap. I also find that soap operas are a good way to learn colloquialisms and cultural stuff.