Learning English for LIFE-Communicative Projects

[Elmas Onbasi]

Last week I gave a mini-project to my students. They are studying at the prep school and what they need is not grammar. They say that they had been taught grammar in detail for many years however they could not USE the language (which is the basic aim) to COMMUNICATE.

I waited for enough input since they were "real" Elementary level students, after for nearly three months I asked them to interview with the English speaking people outside in the "real world". Here is one of  their recordings. They seem very happy to express themselves in a foreign language for the first time. This made me quite happy, too. We watched their recordings at the class and we designed an activity out of it. This must be a teacher's ultimate happiness, I think.