As you do your cultural exploration learn to talk about the activities you see. Take pictures, if appropriate.

Beginning Learners:

It is hard to suggest specific vocabulary for this lesson, because the vocabulary will depend on what is going on in your neighborhood – where you live, whether it is in a city or in the country. Remember that beginning learners are mostly learning vocabulary and how to use it in simple sentences. You need nouns, verbs, descriptive words. These are the building blocks for being able to understand people and talk to them about the activities you see.

Suggested Activities:

Use Look and Listen and Do to learn the names for the activities being done, plus the name of the person or worker doing them, if relevant. For example: building a house. A person who builds a house is a builder. Or you can just learn to say what you saw: “A woman was weaving,” “A man was fixing a bicycle” and so forth. First learn to recognize the pictures of the activities, and then add speaking when you are ready.

Intermediate Learners

Activity 1: Shared Experience. Ask your LH to walk around the neighborhood with you and to tell you what he or she sees people doing. When you get home, ask him/her to tell you again and record what your LH remembers about the activities you saw. Ask about any words you don’t’ know, then listen to the recordings on your own.

Activity 2: The next day try to recount to your LH what you saw together in the neighborhood. Don’t try to memorize exactly what the LH said, but just use some of the vocabulary you have learned to talk about things in your own way.