Creating a ELP/JLP Exchange Class

Tomorrow will be my first attempt at an international exchange class at ICU. My English language program students ("ELP students") will be visited by a group of international students studying Japanese at ICU ("JLP students") and the schedule will roughly be as follows:

10:10 Class starts with an explanation of a ice-breaking activity that will be conducted in Japanese.

10:15 The ice-breaker consists of everyone introducing three things in Japanese about themselves. One thing is false, so the others need to guess. This will be played in groups of roughly 3 or 4 ELP students plus 3 or 4 JLP students, so groups of 6 to 8. That can be quite large... If we allow 3 minutes to write three things, and then each person takes 3 minutes to introduce...it can take 30 minutes just for that. Strict time keeping is needed. Or, smaller groups... Or make sure the JLP students go first and skip the ELP students 3 things intro if time runs out.

10:40 (target time) ELP groups start their presentations in English, with a time limit of 15 minutes, definitely finishing by 11:00?

11:00 JLP students match up with ELP students to ask questions about the presentation and possibly give some suggestions.

11:15 Try to get some feedback on what each student thought about the exchange...or just ask them to take it home and submit it later.

-Things to be careful of:
1) Time management. Make sure things go according to the schedule so that all parts get the planned amount of time. Otherwise, the exchange can feel like a waste for certain group.
2) Equality of opportunity: Make sure everyone knows that there will be an exchange next Friday too with a similar structure.
3) Expectation management: Make sure all sides have realistic expectations about what is going to happen. They need to know this is experimental and that their speaking time for their foreignn language will be cut in half. The goals of the class have to be made clear -- Hopefully they will agree that the goals are worth the time allocation.
4) Fear of frustration/stress -- It is very likely that students will feel stress about their language ability. Hopefully most students will be OK, and students will be able to help each other by good listening, good encouragement etc.

I hope it goes well! I plan to write a report on this blog, so stay tuned.