Fancy a threesome?

This is not what you think, not at all. I'm just talking about chat here. Nothing more. Nothing to see here, people, move on please.

I've run conversation classes. As a teacher I matched students with volunteers. Gave them prompt sheets to give them something to talk about.

Usually there would be several English learners with one volunteer, or, if there were enough, we'd pair them up: one on one.

But these conversations would often turn into mini-lessons, mini-classes. Which isn't ideal.

And then I'd sit in and try to gently steer the activity towards regular conversation. That involved me responding to the volunteer in a manner in which I wanted the students to adopt, and also model for the volunteer how I'd like he or she to interact.

It struck me then that it is very valuable for students to see, and be a part of, a group that had native speakers speaking with one another.

They'd see the conventions we use. They'd be able to sit back and then join in when ready. This reduced any pressure that they might be under. And the language used would as a result approach more authentic English.

I've since read in Kato Lomb's book: Polyglot, How I Learn Languages that she encourages the same approach.