Do a mingle activity that focuses on a grammar point or things of interest. Here's an arbitrary example:
Ask people about their summer break. Find people whose names you can write in the blocks. Ask "What can you tell me?" Only write a name once.
1. I sang at KTV.
2. I had a big fight with someone in my family.
3. I didn't eat much candy.
4. I played some mah-jong.
5. I went to the cinema to see a movie.
6. I was bored during the holiday.
7. I have been exercising a lot recently.
8. I have been looking forward to Taiwan_Student's summer camp class.
9. I met an interesting boy/girl.
10. I enjoyed hot springs.
11. I played a lot of computer games.
12. I ate Japanese food.
You make a sheet of paper with 12 blocks. Each block has one of these questions. Try to find simple pictures to put in the blocks to help illustrate the questions. They have to find someone who has done one of the things and write their name in the block. They can't be lazy. They have to ask the questions. In English. And they have to get 12 DIFFERENT names.
High school kids and freshman uni students LOVE this. It gets them out of their seats, and they get to meet each other and learn each others' English names.
First explain the activity, and then go through the questions, clarifying any terms which they may not understand. Then do a demo with one of the smart, nerdy students to show how it works.
You can stretch this out for easily an hour or more. After everybody has 12 names, start going through the class:
"Hey, John! Who told you that they played a lot of computer games?"
"Maggie! Put up your hand, please!"
"Hi Maggie! What games did you play? Who did you play with? Did you play online?"
"Maggie, tell us who said they'd been exercising a lot recently?"
"Andy! What were you doing?"
"Wow! Basketball! Where did you play? How often? Every day?"
This activity is GREAT early on to get them up and chatting. An excellent ice-breaker.
You can live here and have a great life and not be the least bit into living the local life. Clowns will try to diss you for it saying you gotta get down with the program, but fuck em, treat this place like a buffet and yous be on a diet. Take what you want and nothing extra, slam those oysters, but leave the bread sticks and dinner rolls behind. - Deuce Dropper
I'm much more of a nasty rotter in real life, especially with vapid or vacuous verbiage from the ill read & intellectually challenged. - TheGingerMan
Don't be a cheap cunt. - Deuce Dropper
People are stupid everywhere, but there's something childlike and adorable about Taiwanese stupidity. - rowland
This post was recommended by 2 Forumosans: archylgp
(18 Jul 2012, 08:58), Taiwan_Student
(18 Jul 2012, 00:10)