Some of my students have exams coming up in about two weeks. One of the things they have to do for exams is describe a brochure in English. "This document is a brochure for the **** hotel. You can tell they are a high quality hotel because of the quality of the paper and the classy design." Yeah, I would pretty much die of happiness if any of my students said that. I mostly get comments like, "I can see a picture of a room. I can see a bed in the room." Okay, to be fair one aspect of describing the brochure is to describe the pictures in detail. And then to talk about the text, and then to talk about how the text supports the pictures. In any case this is very difficult for the students who can't even seem to describe the brochure in French much less in English.
I knew I was to have a class with these kids on Wednesday and I decided I was going to help them. So I designed a lesson plan whereby I would give them all blank 'brochures' so they could start by describing the shape, for example, "this is a bifold brochure" "this brochure is a flyer" or "this brochure is a booklet". The next step would be to partner them up and give one of the partners a brochure with just the pictures on it, the other partner would keep the blank I'd already handed out and they would have to work together, one describing the pictures and their locations and the other drawing them on the blank. The next step was to switch and give the other partner a brochure with just the text. He would then have to describe to his partner the location and content of the text so his partner could add it to the pictures already drawn on the blank brochure. The third step was to give them the complete brochure and have them as partners come up with a full description of images, text, and the relation between the two, and if they liked the brochure or would have changed anything. I then spent about 3 hours creating the brochure (three copies of each, one complete, one with just text, and one with just pictures). I actually enjoyed it and felt creative. It was fun because I used humor in my brochures, for example one hotel was called the Mythical Hotel and instead of contact information they just had a note saying you had to go on a quest to find them. Long story short I was excited to try out my activity.
It went fairly well, the kids had fun and did pretty well with the activity until it came to actually doing the real description at the end at which point they all failed fairly miserably. I was hoping the step by step game would help them see better how to describe a brochure but in the end their 'full-descriptions' were mostly about one paragraph of broken English about either really specific details with no introduction or a general overall description with no detail. Definitely not up to speed for the exams. I had two groups and thus two chances with activity and the worst part was the last group decided class was over about 10 minutes early and that the last two groups wouldn't need to present (I had had each group present their brochure). I had to twist their arms (not literally of course) to stay until the end and to give the presentation. They acted super surly and resentful the whole time. Amazing how that last ten minutes sapped all my energy. Kids really do know how to get what they want because I would have been happier if I'd just let them leave early.
I ended up giving my homemade brochures to the teacher in case she wants to use them again someday. I'm not sure she will but I hope so. I like the idea that I've left something behind. Well, at least I know that next years assistant will hear at least some stories about me, as I have heard some stories about the assistant who came before.
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