The “Pub Discussion” session had to come early in our English Without Books course, since Czechs love going to pubs and so do native speakers living in Brno.
So we agreed to meet at the Sherlock Holmes pub, at 5:30pm as usual, and talked and laughed and drank/ate and discussed the English language. A few even partied till the wee hours (or so I heard :).
I want to thank Glenn, Matt and Aaron, my native speaker friends, who kept the students busy all evening. They made sure everyone spoke a lot of English, while I was trying to record parts of the meeting. Why don´t you have a look for yourself… (please, be tolerant, this was my first video editing attempt with Windows Media Maker)
THE GAME
I chose 14 sentences which the Czech group had to translate from Czech into English. The “native speaker” group was not allowed to help the students; in fact, I gave them the same phrases in Czech and they had to show how much Czech they know by translating them into our language. After both groups were done, they got together in order to find the pairs, however they were not allowed to look at the correct printed version. This started quite a few language discussions, (e.g. “shall” x “should” in “Shall I open the window”). Here are the sentences:
I didn´t have to go to work this morning.
Are you even listening to me?
Are you having a good time?
I´ve never been here before.
I´ve been waiting here for ages!
Shall I open the window?
If you want, I´ll give you a lift.
Can you hear me well?
Do we have to go now?
I had to wait for a friend.
If I were you, I wouldn´t do it.
No worries, Tomáš is cool.
No pain no gain.
Don´t you dare!
Nina