Cafe Q: Believe English 6p343e

Chapter 1

Welcome

Some of the questions in this book are hard. Give yourself the time to think about them. You can do it. You should do it. We learn languages to share our ideas with other people. Language helps us spend time together: with our thoughts, with ourselves, and with each other.

Cafes give us a time and place to listen to each other. Each question in these menus is a key that opens the door to a good conversation. It is a chance to talk out loud with a friend, or quietly put our ideas on paper. Share what you know. Use this time to improve your vocabulary and English skills so you can polish and perfect your ideas. Conversation is a gift we give each other, and it really is the thought that counts. Your thoughts.

1,2,3,4

1 Choose a menu. 2 Let the appetizer get you thinking. 3 Write down ten words that describe the topic. 4 Try to use those ten words in your discussion.

Every chapter has a theme. You can pick the ones that are interesting to you.

Chapter 2

People

Section 1

Everybody likes to talk about other people. It is important that we think about other people too. Which means asking questions. Our prejudices are the answers we get without thinking. Questions makes us think. Questions help us open our minds and our hearts to other people, and even to ourselves.

Section 2

Chapter 3

Meaning is meaningless. Nothing has to mean anything. Language shows us that. The sounds ‘water,’ ‘nuoc,’ ‘agua,’ ‘mizu’ all name the same thing in different languages. But if you do not speak those languages, the sounds mean nothing to you. Even if you are very, very thirsty.

We create meaning. ‘Water‘ means water because English speaking people agree on what that sound should represent. People who do not speak English don’t know that sound, they have a different sound they use, maybe even a different idea. Language helps us share what we know with each other. We can learn each other’s languages and see the world again in a whole new way. Let these questions challenge you: How do you know what you know?

Chapter 4

Concepts

When a light bulb goes off in our heads, it doesn’t simply illuminate the dark; it creates space where there was none before. The world we live in is a budding flower. With each new idea we open our minds, and our world gets bigger and bigger.

Chapter 5

Our Things

Are we what we eat? Do clothes make the man? Our things say a lot . These questions will help us say a lot about our things. Talking about our things makes our learning powerful and permanent. Each thing is a vocabulary word and a story. The vocabulary word is what you find in a dictionary when you want to know what to call something. The story is what you see in yourself when you want to understand what it means to you.

Chapter 6

Actions

Do actions speak louder than words? What are they saying? What are we saying when we do the things we do? And, most importantly, how do we explain our actions to ourselves and other people? Some things we do unconsciously like breathing. Some things we do without thinking like speaking in anger. And sometimes we do things we just don’t know how to talk about like laughing out loud. Let’s make time now to listen to each other and learn.

Chapter 7

Language

Language is a magic puzzle. Our words are the pieces to the puzzle, and we carefully arrange them to create the world we want to see. Watching a movie, reading a book, or talking to a friend, we are mostly discovering the same stories again and again. The small details and our way of telling them are what is special. Now you are learning how to do this in English and discovering a whole new world!

Chapter 8

The Senses

We have five ways of knowing the world around us: sight, taste, touch, sound, smell. We have one way of knowing the world within us- questions. These menus will help us explore how we perceive the world around us. We often use language like a dictionary to translate what our senses are telling us. A particular smell might become “apple pie,” “Mom,” or “Thanksgiving” in my mind. What smell is that? What does it mean to you?

Chapter 9

Experiences

“What happened?” is a question that is easier to ask than to answer. It can be hard to understand ourselves and the world around us. It helps to go step by step. First to describe an experience and then to interpret it. And then to look again at how the two fit together: What happened? and How do I feel about that? It can help to do that in a new language. Thinking about things in a second language is harder, but the difficulty is good. It slows us down and makes us more careful thinkers. We focus on the vocabulary and the grammar: Is this the right word? Is this the best way to say it? In our first language words are as natural as feelings, and we can say things without thinking about them. In a new language we really do choose our words more carefully.

Chapter 10

Nature

We are small fish in a big sea, but we sure make a lot of waves. Let’s use these questions to think about how we live in the world, how we change the world, and how the world changes us. Whenever we see a beautiful sunset or a cute animal, we turn to our our friends and say,”Look! Look!” With these questions, let’s turn to our friends and say, “Listen! Listen!”

Chapter 11

Celebrations

There are many ways and reasons to be happy. Celebrations are special times when we are happy together and for the same thing. English is bringing some celebrations with it into the wider world. Learning English means learning about some of the holidays English speaking people celebrate. What do these days mean to you? As your English improves what special days from your culture can you introduce to English speaking people? Let’s celebrate the way a common language can bring us all closer together.

Chapter 12

Places

What are the places where you spend your life? How do they affect you? What do you do to make them places you want to be? We all have special places in our lives. The place we grew up, the place our family is from, the place we may be living now. Each place and its people are a community in our lives. A community we want to protect and make better. A conversation is a chance to a new community, to create a new community. Let’s find a good place to sit and talk.

Chapter 13

Man-made Stuff

Most people today live in a world of invented things. We have tools that can do almost everything for us. Cook our food, give us light at night, move us from place to place, even translate our ideas from one language to another. Well, almost. We still need us. Our inventions help us with things, but we still have to do them, and do them well. What are the tools we make? How do we use those tools to improve our lives?

Chapter 14

Conversation Helpers

Section 1

Listening & Speaking Strategies

Ask Questions

To Get More Information:

Why? How? When? How did _________ make you feel? What do you mean? What do you mean by ___________? Would you tell me more about _____? What do you think about ________ _? Did you like ___________________? How often do you ____________?

To Clarify: Pardon? Could you repeat that? Could you explain ____________? What did you say? Could you say that in different words? What does ___________ mean?

To Check Your Understanding: Do you mean ______________? Are you saying _______________? You said (repeat whatever you think the person said)? What you’re saying is (summarize what the person said)?

To Get a Reaction: What do you think of my idea? How do you feel about that?

To Engage Someone: What do you think ___ would say about your idea? Would you want to _________ again?

What would you do if ____________? What advice would you give someone in that situation? What if _____________? Don’t you think __________?

Share Your Ideas

Agree: I agree with you because __________. I see what you mean. I think so, too. That’s very true.

Disagree: I disagree with you because ________. I see your point, but ______________. Yes, but _________________. That’s not true at all.

To Interrupt:

Excuse me, but I’d like to say something. Yes, but __________________. Did you just say_________?

Sentence Starters: That reminds me of _______________. Your idea makes me think of _______. I think that ______________. I worry that _____________. When I was a child I _________.

Listen Looking is listening. Show people you are listening them by looking at them. Show people you heard them by talking about their story:

1 Show them that you heard them, repeat a detail from their story. You said you like the coffee at Cafe Q.

2 Check your understanding, confirm a detail from their story. Did you say Cafe Q was near your house or near your school? 3 Show them you are interested in their story, ask for new information. What other things do you like about Cafe Q? 4 Say thank you.

Chapter 15

Worksheets

You can use these simple worksheets to help you use the Cafe Q menus on your own or in class.

The most important aspect of the menus is being able to have conversations about ideas that are important to us. Fill-in-the-blank exercises are easy to forget because they don’t mean anything to us and our brain doesn’t have any place to put the answers to the questions or any reason to create a place to keep the answers. The answers in Cafe Q are our answers about our lives, values, and ideas.

Your answers can never be wrong. Maybe they could be better. This means you have the right idea, your idea. The challenge is to improve the way you explain your ideas in English.

Your answers are important. We learn languages to talk to each other. We talk to each other so that we can understand other people’s ideas. That means you and your ideas.

Thank you for learning English.

Chapter 16

Thank You!

Thank you for learning English.

I hope you will share your ideas with us.

Believe English is online at www.believenglish.com

We are also on Facebook and Instagram as Believe English.

Our illustrator is on Facebook as H justforfun.