Elite Slides
The Elite slides are slides with especially challenging language that the students don't have access to before class to prepare for. The Elite slides are discussion-based and focus on tough words, metaphors, phrasal verbs and idioms. Feel free to use these classes to teach much more difficult language and explain the context and nuance of phrases. Elite Slides follow a totally different style and format to our other classes.
The Elite slides are aimed our most talented super-level students (see our Level Guide). The slides are in the following order:
- Front Page
- Word Association
- Metaphors
- Phrasal Verbs And Idioms
- Open Mic
1. Front Page
Unlike the other slides, there no pictures, topics or questions on the front page of an elite class.
Have this slide open as students enter the class and you can use it to chat with them, and perhaps prepare them for the metaphor topic.
2. Word Association
The words association slide has a list of words — sometimes related, sometimes not — and a list of steps.
Teachers approach this slide in different ways, so feel free to be creative. Many teachers get each student to go through steps 1 to 4 one at a time. Others get one student to choose the word, the next student to define the word, the third student to think of related words and the fourth to discuss the word in relation to a story.
Try to ensure each student has equal speaking time and that you don't allow a single student to speak for too long.
3. Metaphors
This slide has a list of metaphorical expressions (sometimes similes too) for the students to play with.
It's good to give each student a metaphor and ask them to guess the meaning. Many students will struggle, encourage them to do their best, if they can't guess, it's worth opening it up to the rest of the class to guess before the teacher jumps in with an explanation.
After all the meanings have been worked out, ask each student to choose a metaphor and try and use it in a short story or series of sentences.
4. Phrasal Verbs And Idioms
This slide has two parts: a set of phrasal verbs at the top and a set of idioms at the bottom.
With the phrasal verbs, ask the students to explain or differentiate each of the phrasal verbs (students have a lot of trouble distinguishing the difference due to Japanese not containing prepositions), Your aim here is to help them understand the difference and nuances with very similar phrases.
With the idioms, ask them to define the meanings. If you have extra time, you can ask them to tell a story using them, just like with the metaphors.
3. Open Mic
The open mic slide has a list of categories to prompt the students to speak. This is the final slide of the Elite class.
Ask the student to choose a category from the list, or to come up with their own topic to talk about. You can moderate the discussion however you wish. Some teachers prefer to have the students speak on a topic they choose in turn, others prefer to get all the students to speak on the same topic.
This slide is a flexible time-filler at the end of a class. Many teachers don't have time to reach this slide, but use it if they have 5 minutes left.