I would like to use this forum to share with you how I train my students to use English as a living language.  I don’t like to use textbooks as you may be locked in to the written English if you don’t know how to make use of the textbook articles.  Surely you can learn vocabulary and writing from textbook articles, and grammar points as well.

When I met this Shenzhen middle school student last month for the first time, she came directly from a laboratory.

My question to her:  “Tell me what you did before you came to see me?”

QUOTE
I went for our laboratory class this morning.  Our school hasn’t got any laboratory facilities so we have to go to another school for our laboratory classes.  Our school has made prior arrangements with the other school so they know when we will need their laboratory facilities.  There are laboratory assistants during our lab classes to help us set up the apparatus and ready the material we need for the lab experiments.  When experiments are not dangerous, we can have our hands-on experience doing the experiments on our own.  However, with experiments which are dangerous, the teacher will demonstrate to us the complete experiment.  Then we can watch only.
UNQUOTE

The above is not the words of my student certainly, else she would not need my training at all.

Then when I met her this morning, I asked her:  “Can you describe an experiment to me?”

QUOTE
Alright, this is an experiment we did before.  The experiment is to demonstrate that the speed of chemical reaction is related to the surface area of the substance involved.  We need two test tubes of the same size for that purpose.  We make sure these two test tubes are kept under the same environment in the process of the experiment.  Then we will pour in equal amount of an acid in the two test tubes..  Into one of the test tubes, we put in some small granite rock pieces.  Granite rock in powder form of the same weight is then put into the other tube at the same time.   Now we can see a drastic difference inside the test tubes.  We don’t see much change quickly in the one with the smaller pieces, but we can see a lot of bubbles right away in the one with granite powder due to the release of carbon dioxide from the chemical action of the acid on the powder.  So, we can safely say that surface area plays a part in the experiment.  Collectively, there is more surface area in the powder compared to the small pieces.  In conclusion, this is a good proof that the more surface area there is, the faster chemical reaction will take place.
UNQUOTE

We don’t go into the details of chemical names as I have already forgotten my chemistry lessons which I learned more than 45 years ago.  This is not going to affect us in learning how to describe the experiment.  Here we are just focused on how to talk about something in English.

One simple question can be used again and again to trigger you to give an answer using different answers.  Try that out yourself.