PERSONAL INFORMATION
What's your name?

Objective

To ask and respond to questions about personal information.

Goals

To ask and respond orally and in writing to personal information questions.

Suggestions

• Ask personal information questions daily.
• Don't teach all the questions at the same time.
• Use local references.
• Use real forms where appropriate but they are often very complicated.
• Repetition is necessary to retain information.
• Create personalized activities that relate to learners.
• Encourage learners to write on the lines from left to right.
• Forms often use abbreviations. Pre-teach the vocabulary and abbreviations before attempting to fill out a form.
• Sometimes trust has to be developed before people feel comfortable sharing personal information.
• People sometimes have received a negative reaction when responding to questions regarding the number of children they have. This can leave learners feeling hesitant when such questions are asked.
• Some forms are written in all upper case letters. Introduce both upper and lower case forms to your learners.
• Many people are cautious about giving out their Social Insurance Number. It is included here because it is a common question for learners. As well, it is important to know what it is and what it is used for. Use your discretion as to how to use it in class.

Activities

• Write learners name several times with various letters blanked out.
• Cut up simple sentences about learner and ask learners to put the papers together.
• Learners ask each other how many children they have, their phone number, their address, etc.
• For more advanced learners, have the questions on one piece of paper and the answers on another piece of paper. Learners match the question with the answer.