The Spanish and Bulgarian Ladies-and a little TBL

Chilly in the house of Angeles this morning and thoughts naturally turned to weather. Pavlina decribed in amazement how there had been 'rain of ice' ...'what is this in English?' as we went into the living room and sat at the impromtu class desk, normally a handsome dining table. Now covered in books and various dictionaries and notebooks. Ready for the off. 


'Drop that lesson plan,' I thought,' today we're going to talk about the weather!' And we did. 
'hail(v) and 'hailstones' (n), Two items that gave birth to a 'lesson' in comparing the climate in Valencia, coastal and inland Bulgaria and the good old UK. An avalanche of language, useful and real-next time someone asks them 'what's the weather like?' they had better be prepared for...well, 'a deluge' or 'torrent' of adjective and noun pairings with a quantity of 'absolutely freezing's and 'drops in temperature's thrown in for good measure.


I've turned them on to register and now Pavlina in particular is always asking whether that's formal or informal...could I say that at a cocktail party? All three are married to NATO guys and mix a lot in the international community in these parts. 




So we looked at a few patterns and lexical items coming out of the initial conversation before giving each of them an extended turn at desribing the weather typically experienced in each of the four seasons back home. I provided a model with a description of the changeable nature of weather in the UK and finally brought it all together by desribing and comparing with the weather  in this part of Portugal. This extended to criticism of house-building techniques here- the ineffective central heating made this a must, and then to them going away promsing to check out the weather on the net and TV, in English of course. Some choice language they saw today included;

stable conditions (adj + v), not too hot, considerable variation in temperature, quite windy, a light/heavy shower, double-rainbow, the average temperature, damp vs dry, forecast (n. v) etc. 

Lancaster in the snow.


A TBL lesson out of the blue, and it worked. They communicated inaccurately of course (they are at the cusp of A2/B1 all three)  but experienced the pleasing sensation  of exchanging meaning and went away being able to do so again when needed, as well as having picked up a load of useful language to reivew and study as they wish.  Much confidence building and it's great that they don't just take my word for things. Now if only I could them to put their pens down.