Teaching English to Teens

A Communicative Activity

Introduction.

Before about 2 years I started a kind of pen pal connection between

my students and students of the same ages in Canada/ Toronto. I
established this connection with: Mr. Gregg LaMarsh a teacher at Bruce
Junior Public School. I was sending and receiving the letters written by
the students themselves in both sides here and in Canada. I encouraged
my students to write the letters with their own hands and even if there are
a lot of spelling mistakes. This connection worked for more than two
years, it gave my students an idea that there are students just like them in
the other side of the world. What I did after receiving the first pack of
letters from the Canadian, I gave each student one letter from the
Canadian side, and the connection established and they began writing to
a specific student there then they received letters sent to them with their
names on it. All what I was doing in this project is to be the man who
collect the letters and packed them to send them to Mr. Gregg who was
doing the same with his students. In fact this project was very useful to
my students as well as to Canadian students. The students were very
happy when they told me many things about their friends in Canada, the
habits, hopes, houses, dogs and what kind of food they like.

Demonstrate some aspects of Canadian culture and

Title of lesson comparing it with ours using letters written during
Pen Pal Connection.
Maher Qabasi
By
Aqaba Jordan
Students ages: 14 16

Student Profile Grade 8th 10th

Proficiency level: 4/10

Class size: 18.
Class Profile
Duration: 1 hour.
 Target
Speaking, Listening, writing and reading
Language
Target Content Canadian culture comparing with our own culture.
Canadian students pictures and a paper which
Materials contains a summary about the Canadian student
habits, favorite food and interests.
The letters and pictures which were sent by post
Source office during the Pen Pal Connection between our
students and the Canadian students.
The lesson must be prepared by the students
themselves a day before the discussion. I began the
lesson in the previous day asking each student to
write individually- a summary about his
Canadian friend on a paper in 4 or five sentences to
introduce his friend's name, hoppy, favorite food,
pet's name, interests .. etc.
At the beginning of the lesson, I asked the students
to prepare their pens and papers to write down the
names of three Canadian students, three pet's
Procedure names, three favorite food and three interests while
each of their classmates is reading what he
prepared in front of the class. (2 minutes for this
introduction). Then I asked every student to stand
in front of the class to read the summary he
prepared about his friend in (1 minute).

We continue doing this until all the students take

their turns. This procedure will take about 20
minutes (2 minutes introduction by me and
preparing their tools and 18 minutes for the
students 1 min/student)
Task 1: Asking the students to read again
-individually- the names of three Canadian
students, three pet's names, three favorite food and
three interests (18 mins. 1 min/student):
 Task 2 Working in groups of 6. In this task I'll ask
each group to write down three or more differences
between our and Canadian's cultures. Then I ask
each group to chose a student to write these
differences on the board. The three students begin
writing at the same time each one on a column on
the board (12 mins):
Task 3 In the last 10 min, I praise them for the hard
work they did and give them a self assist with one
question (What did you learn from this project?) I
(10 mins):

In this lesson we achieved the following:

1) Incorporates specific content or theme: The specific theme is

knowing another culture through the letters from students of their ages
and comparing it with our own culture.
2) Promotes authentic communication in English: when talking about
their own experience in writing letters and receiving letters from other
students from other country and being proud of talking about their own
culture when they wrote these letters and when they began comparing the
differences in this lesson.
3) Integrates all four language skills: As I explain in the procedure the
students listen to their classmates, read from their papers and speak in
front of others and write down the summary in their homes and then three
things I during the lesson as explained in the procedure and the tasks.
4) Fosters learner autonomy: as shown in task 3.