How (well) do my ideas and materials work?

One of the most important parts of a Pre-sessional, in my view, is getting the class to gel as soon as possible, with the teacher playing a crucial role in facilitating this. On a 5 week Pre-sessional with a class of 20 students there is worryingly little time to get to know the student's individually in terms of background or learning styles. Nor can the tutor do a thorough needs analysis of each student. Instead one has to make certain sweeping judgements about their aims and abilities and plan accordingly. 

This obviously affects the teachers choice of materials and ideas on how to approach lesson planning. With more long term classes such as Insessionals or university preparation programmes of 3 months plus, planning and materials choice can be a more sedate, thoughtful and informed process for the teacher and can be based on formative learning and assessment which reacts to the needs and learning styles of the students. On a Pre-sessional, however, the list of discrete items to be covered looms large and dominates much planning and materials choices; I found the recurring questions to be "What do I have to get through this week?" and "What activities and materials can do this quickly and effectively?"

So, here I'd just like to share 2 activities/ materials which managed to answer both questions better than I had imagined. 

Summary writing
The first activity involved summary writing and worked very well (with my class). I used the text on culture shock available from the UCKISA website (http://www.ukcisa.org.uk/files/pdf/info_sheets/culture_shock_print.pdf), put the students into teams and asked them a series of short questions about the text, with no pre-reading or pre-teaching of vocabulary. They had to skim the text to find the answers and the first student to shout the correct answer was awarded a point for their team. At the end of the questions all students had to write a summary of the text based on their answers only (I removed the texts so no reference to it could be made). After writing the summaries students compared them to the text and each other and discussed any points that they thought should be added/ deleted from the summary. 

This activity was very quick and produced good results mainly due to the simple, factual nature of the text and careful preparation of the questions. As a result, I continued to use it until the students had increased in confidence and wanted to summarise for themselves without the guidance from my questions.

Presentation practice
The second activity was that old chestnut "Dragon's Den" which I used for presentation practice. As we all know, students often fail to take presentations seriously enough and are reluctant to critically evaluate their peers. Unfortunately the level of analysis required at both under and postgraduate level only becomes apparent when our students are at university and then it's too late. 

So, for this version of Dragon's Den I set up 4 pairs of dragons and 4 groups of entrepreneurs with 3 students in each group. Each group of entrepreneurs had to create a product and then give a 10 minute presentation of it to each pair of dragons who then discussed and agreed together who would get the investment. While the entrepreneurs designed and planned their product, the dragons made a list of questions. The key point here was that I instructed the dragons to really act the part; there was to be no smiling or laughing, they were to interrupt the entrepreneurs often to clarify points and make their questions direct, they had to take notes and generally make the entrepreneurs feel as uncomfortable as possible. 

The result was fabulous! The dragons were amazing and it was difficult for me not to burst into fits of hysterics as they rolled their eyes, peered over their glasses, exchanged knowing looks in their pairs and stopped the entrepreneurs in their tracks with phrases like, "Thanks but I think we've heard enough now." and "How exactly do you plan to market this product?" 

The entrepreneurs had started with a fairly relaxed attitude to their role in the activity yet it soon became apparent that this was no fun speaking activity and the dragons meant business! The entrepreneurs' behaviour started to change rapidly; they became tongue tied and nervous but as they repeated their "pitches" to each set of dragons a new seriousness and maturity emerged. All of a sudden they seemed to want to win. As I watched this unfold I was struck by one thing: the "lift" in attitude and performance was being entirely student driven and there was nothing I could have contributed as a teacher to improve it.

Now I'd like to say that the final presentations were amazing as a result of this activity but that would of course be a fat lie! Instead I noticed an attentive audience, good incisive post presentation questions and a higher level of critical analysis. Which means that in answer to my title question "How (well) do my ideas and materials work?" I can confidently say the in 5 week course 2 of them were great!