Language Resident Name: Tilman Viëtor

Day and Date: Wednesday, 09/11/2019

Language and Level (intermediate or advanced class): German, Intermediate

Class theme/topics discussed: Housing: How do you live? How to shop for furniture and decoration at IKEA.

Goal of the class: Learning vocabulary about furniture and housing, negotiating, talking about your living situation

How did you structure the class?

  1. Warm-up: What do you like in your dorm room? Why? (Talking with their neighbor)
  2. Brainstorming for words for furniture and decoration. First make individual lists of all words that come to mind, then say a word one after the other until you don’t know another word (no words twice). Everyone has three lives. You lose one life if you don’t know a word when it is your turn. When you lose three times, you are out. The last person standing wins a prize.
  3. Input: IKEA ad, talking about the ad to assure understanding.
  4. Shopping at IKEA: Budget constraint of 700 EUR, time constraint of 20 minutes, work with a partner to furnish your new one-bedroom apartment together.
  5. Explain to the other pairs what you bought, and why.

What technology, media or props did you use? (internet resources, playmobiles, handouts, etc.)

Powerpoint, Whiteboard, Pens, Banana with a small German flag as the prize

What worked well in this class? What did not work?

The Brainstorming did not go very well. After about two rounds no one came up with any more new words. The shopping at IKEA bit was great. They had a lot of fun doing that and learned new words and phrases.

How could this class be improved/ modified?

It will probably work way better with a big group, because more people usually mean more ideas for words. Also, it would be more interesting to see more than just two different ways to furnish apartments, so the students get exposed to more words. Maybe it would also be good to lower the budget to about 600 EUR, so they feel the constraint more.

Int.-presentation-wohnen