As the year progresses, participate in as many national holidays as you can and religious holidays to the extent you feel comfortable participating. You may be able to observe, even if you don’t participate.

Beginning Learners:

Possible vocabulary:

1. Names for holidays
2. Month and day held. This is a good time to review names of months, if you need to.
3. Vocabulary associated with each holiday: For example, in America Thanksgiving Day is associated with turkeys, football, Autumn leaves, family. Soong Kran in Thailand is associated with water. Guy Fawkes Day in England is associated with Bonfires and fireworks. Note special foods, clothing, historical or mythical figures associated with the event. Learn the names for as many of these things as you can.

Possible Learning Activities:

LH can say “Americans eat turkey on this day” And you say “Thanksgiving” or, Thai people throw water on this holiday. You say “Soong Kran”.

Intermediate Learners:

Do a Shared Experience with a LH. For example, visit the Flower Festival Parade in Thailand. Take pictures, if appropriate. Afterwards ask your LH to describe some of the highlights of the parade and record it. Ask about any vocabulary you don’t understand. Listen to the recording. Later, go out and tell your neighbors about what you saw at the Flower Festival parade.

People communicate as much with the rest of their bodies as they do by the words they utter with their mouths. Often people believe the message conveyed by body language more than the message in your words, so it is important to learn body language and the messages it is conveying.

Beginning Learners:

In some ways, beginners have an advantage in observing body language, because you don’t yet know enough language to say very much and so aren’t distracted by thinking of what to say. When you practicing your Useful Phrases, such as greetings, and leavetaking expressions, or the other phrases you have used, Role Play these exchanges with your LH and note the body language, including: how far away he or she stands. Note if this is different between men and women, two men or two women. Also notice gestures and facial expressions. For example, in some cultures you would never wave at someone with your left hand or take food, or offer food with your left hand – which is considered your dirty hand, no matter how well you have washed it. Also pay attention to eye contact – especially between people of opposite sex.

Tell your LH you want to practice body language in the Conversational Exchanges you have learned to say.

Intermediate Learners:

When you are practicing Dialogue Variations, pay attention to changes in Body Language that go along with differences in age or status of the participants, or the formality of the occasions. Role Play these with your LH.

More and more people around the world are using electronic communication: mobile phones, text messages, e-mail etc. There are still some places where this is not true, but they are fewer and farther between. If you are learning a language where people use electronic communication, you need to learn how to talk about it and how language changes when it is used this way.

Beginning Learners:

Talking on the phone is harder than talking face to face, because you only get part of the auditory message and can’t see the speaker’s face. Still, there are some things you can learn from the beginning about answering the phone:

Possible vocabulary:

Useful phrases:

• What to say when you answer the phone
• What you say when you are ending a phone call
• I’d like to add X money to my phone.
• Where can I add minutes to my phone?

You might also get a friend to help you figure out how to read some of the top-level words on the phone interface, such as: Messages, Call history, Contacts, etc.

Texting may be difficult because there are abbreviations that may be different from what you are used to. This is something more suitable for Intermediate learners, unless you are texting someone who speaks a language you already know.

Intermediate Learners:

Talking on the phone can be daunting, but maybe your LH will let you practice by calling him or her, until you get more comfortable.

If you use a mobile phone a lot it would probably be worthwhile to learn all the words you don’t know related to your phone’s interface, such as ring tones, settings, etc.

Try texting messages to a friend, maybe your LH

Most people now have access to visual media such as films, and television programs, and to auditory media, such as radio. Sometimes these are broadcasts and sometimes they are now digitally recorded on DVDs or on computers or other electronic devices. Learn to talk about these media and work at being able to understand them.

Beginning Learners:

Some possible vocabulary:

Here’s a tip for beginners when listening to the radio or television news. First listen to the international news in English or another language you know well. Now you know what’s happening in the world, so when you listen to the news in the language you are now learning, you should be able to pick out some of the main words, such as earthquake, election, or whatever the major stories are about. Local news will be harder and will take longer to understand.

For television, if it is possible, record a section of a program – perhaps not the whole thing. In that way you can listen more than once. If close captioning is available, turn that on so you can see and hear the words. Don’t worry if you can’t understand the whole thing. Listen for some of the main words and guess about the topic.

Intermediate Learners:

Watch a television program with your LH. If possible, record it, or turn on close captioning. Ask questions about things you don’t understand. Sometimes watching a program with subtitles is helpful in understanding the program. Especially if it is on a CD or digital recording, so that you can turn the subtitles on or off.

Newspapers and magazines and books can be useful language learning materials even for beginning learners. You can use them at all levels.

Beginning Learners:

Look for words you already have learned to understand when you hear them. You can buy a newspaper and underline all the words you know. After that, have a guess at what the article is about. Sometimes there is a picture to help you out. In magazines or newspapers, are there advertisements? What are they advertising? Talk this over with your LH.

As for books, look for books at your reading level, even if that is for the smallest children. Even books with one sentence per page and a picture can help you learn to read! Don’t try to read books where you have to look up a lot of words on every page. That isn’t really reading – that’s a different kind of exercise.

Intermediate Learners:

Look for magazines about topics that interest you. You don’t have to be reading great literature at this stage – Sports or fashion magazines are OK, or magazines about pop culture. They will help you learn something about the overall culture of the place you are living in.

A good way to learn both language and culture is to read children’s school books at a level you can handle. Even first grade school books will have a lot of cultural information and civics and moral lessons people want their children to learn. There will also be lessons about the history and heroes of the nation. Reading children’s school books is a good way to learn what all the adults learned when they were growing up.

People think of and talk about time in different ways in different cultures. You want to learn what people recognize as major parts of the day, such as morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night. But cultures vary as to when each section of the day starts. Also, in some cultures, the days are divided up quite differently (as in Thailand).

Beginning Learners:

Learn to tell time, using a clock (if applicable) or drawings of positions of the sun. Learn parts of a day (and night). Learn the names of days of the week, using a calendar. Note that there may not always be a 7-day week! Some cultures traditionally have 5-day weeks, or other numbers.

Other possible vocabulary:

Intermediate Learners:

Ask LH to tell you about a time when he or she was really late to an event – how late is really late? How offended, if at all, was the other person? Look for expressions that indicate how time is viewed. For example, English speakers talk about time as a commodity: we save time, spend time, waste time. We have expressions like “Time is money.” What expressions does this society have involving time?

Even very busy people usually have some time for recreation and leisure activities. What do people do, and how can you talk about these activities?

Beginning Learners:

Learn some words associated with leisure activities, such as games, sports, films or theatre or dance or musical performances, children’s toys and games, parks. The particular vocabulary will depend on the games or activities people do.

Learning Activities:

Use pictures of people or your family of dolls, as well as pictures representing the things people do for recreation. Have your LH say sentences like: “Ali is going to play football.” You point to Ali and the football to show you’ve understood.

Intermediate Learners:

Ask people to tell you about their own favorite leisure or recreation activities. Get a story about something they did recently, or get them to tell you how to play a particular game or activity. Listen several times: once for content, once for new words or grammar or for how the whole story is told (Discourse structure). Try to tell about what you like to do for recreation. Record yourself and ask your LH to retell your story, using appropriate grammar and vocabulary where you made mistakes. Listen to your version and your LH’s version of your story, noting the differences, then try again to tell your story.

Where do people go to shop and eat and just get together with other people? Is there a business center in the middle of town? Or is there something like a shopping precinct or mall? What sorts of activities take place there besides shopping? Are there restaurants, exhibits, concerts?

Beginning Learners:

Learn some vocabulary to talk about shopping centers.

Possible Vocabulary:

Learning Activities:

Go out to a shopping center and take pictures, if this is appropriate. Later on use the Look and Listen technique with a LH to learn the names of different shops and other places in the shopping center. You can also use a plan or map of the shopping center or mall to learn to ask directions and follow directions to different shops or places in the mall. You could come up with a board game based on the mall, where you have to get to the right shop to match an item drawn on a card you pick from a pile. Use your imagination! The goal is to become very familiar with the vocabulary associated with this setting, so you can understand people talking about it later.

Intermediate Learners:

Go to a shopping center with a friend from the culture and later get him or her to talk about your Shared Experience. Record the story as always, and work on learning any vocabulary you don’t understand. Ask a friend to tell you about experiences he or she has had at a shopping center, and record those experiences to listen to and learn more.

What sorts of things do people make? Are there people who specialize in particular crafts? Are there people who make their living from art? In order to talk about arts and crafts, you need to know the language associated with them.

Beginning Learners:

When you see decorative objects, or even useful objects decorated in interesting ways, ask the names of them and the people who make them.

Possible vocabulary:

If possible take pictures of these people making things. Use the Look and Listen technique to learn to recognize the words for these craftspeople, the materials they use and the activities they do.

Intermediate Learners:

Use the Series technique to learn how to understand and tell about how to do a particular craft. Ask people who are the best weavers, potters, etc. and why? What is it about their work that makes it particularly good? Use these texts to work on comparatives and superlatives of adjectives, such as prettier, the most beautiful, etc. If you do a craft, try to talk about it, demonstrate it, teach someone how to do it. Record yourself and listen for areas in which you struggled to communicate. What words or structures do you need to learn?

Every culture has some performance art, such as music, dancing and drama, and also a way to talk about these activities.

Beginning Learners:

Learn the names of different instruments, dances or dancing styles, and drama performances.

Possible vocabulary:

• Instrument names (such as drum, flute, stringed instruments, etc.)
• Names for people who play these instruments (such as drummer, flutist, guitarist, etc.)
• Song (and different kinds of songs, such as folk song, hymn, pop song, etc.)
• Singer
• Choir
• Orchestra or band
• Dance (and different kinds of dances, such as folk dance, ballet, — whatever types are recognized in the culture)
• Dancer
• Play (theatrical production)
• Puppet
• Actor
• Performance
• Set
• Theatre
• Ticket

As with many other topics, take pictures or find pictures of as many of the vocabulary items as possible. Use Look and Listen techniques to learn the names, or make it more interesting by acting out the words: If you hear the word “drum” for instance, act out playing a drum and say “boom boom”. Act out dancing, or being a puppeteer or singing or whatever activity you hear mentioned. Then you say one of those words and ask your LH to act it out!

Intermediate Learners:

Get a short text from your LH about his or her favorite musician, dancer or actor. Ask what makes that person particularly good. Continue your work on comparatives and superlatives, as well and general comprehension of short oral texts. Learn who are some of the best-known and most popular artists in popular culture.