30 Student Activation Tactics [PDF]

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CONTENTS 3-4 MUST READ: A Really Disastrous Semester (5 Months, Zero Improvement): What I Was Doing So Wrong And How I Fixed It 5-6 ERROR CORRECTION: Are Your ESL Students Making These 10 Speaking Mistakes? 7

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TABOO SUBJECTS: Make Them Want to Talk: 5 Taboo Subjects for Your Teen Conversation Class TABOO SUBJECTS: What the ****? 6 Ways to Turn Bad Word Explanations into a Conversation Class SLANG: 6 Activities to Use TV to Teach When Slang is Appropriate

10 PRESENTATIONS: Tweaking Speaking: 5 Ideas for Presentations 11-12 PRESENTATIONS: Using The News: 7 Steps to Fantastic Student Presentations 13-14 MOTIVATION: 7 Ways to Motivate your Students to Speak Out 15-16 MOTIVATION: How To Energize Your Bored Students With This Great Game (Perfect For Any Level, Any Topic, Any Size Of Group) 17 MOTIVATION: Speak Speak Speak: 3 MORE Activities That Motivate Students to Speak 18 MOTIVATION: Use It Or Lose It: 8 Awesome

ESL Activities To Encourage Student Initiative 19-20 DISCUSSION STARTERS: 35 Print And Go Discussion Starters For ESL Students: The Secret Weapon Every Teacher Needs 21 ROLE PLAYS: The Ideal ESL Role Play In 5 Easy Steps 22-23 ROLE PLAYS: How To Create Your Own Role-Plays: 4 Quick Tips On Inventing Infinitely Flexible & Dynamic Discussion Environments Your Students Will Love 24 GROUPS: 5 Ways to Make Talking about Me about Everyone in a Group Conversation Class 25 SMALL TALK: Chit Chat and Small Talk: 5 Activities To Get The Conversation Started With Your Students 26-27 GIVING ADVICE: It’s Not a Problem: 4 Out of the Ordinary Advice Giving Activities 28 FLUENCY: Repeat, Reuse, Review: Stepping Stones to Fluency

32 SKILLS: How to Use a Class Party to Teach 10 Social Conversation Skills 33 SKILLS:Formality, Yea or Nay? Help Your ESL Students Know When to Be Formal with These Useful Tips 34-35 SKILLS: 10 Essential English Skills Your Students Need for College 36 SKILLS: 5 Nifty Tips on How to Help Your ESL Student Handle Awkward Situations 37 SKILLS: When the Going Gets Tough: Teach Your ESL Students How to Manage Difficult Situations 38-39 LEARNING CENTERS: 10 Learning Centers Perfect for Listening and Speaking Class 40-41 TEACHING METHODS: DM? CLT? TPR? 6 Most Popular ESL Teaching Methods, And Which One You Should Be Using 42-43 MUST READ: No Prep, Little Prep, and More Prep Ways to Get Your Students Ready to Learn

29 FLUENCY: 4 Amazing Ideas for AccuracyFluency Balance

44 MUST READ: How Was Your ESL Lesson? How To Assess Your Own Teaching [Checklist]

30-31 OUTSIDE THE CLASS: Get Them Talking Outside of Class: 3 Speaking and Listening Challenges

45 MUST READ: Running dry? Make your ESL lessons irresistible with these ideas to boost your creativity

A Disastrous Semester: What I Was Doing So Wrong And How I Fixed It I had a really disastrous semester earlier this year. I inherited a group of students of a very low level, and all from the same country. I thought, ‘No problem!’ I’d handled large, elementary-level, mono-lingual classes before. After five months together, though, I began to worry that I couldn’t really see any improvement, at least by the measure that I principally use: the ability to spontaneously produce accurate and descriptive English. The lack of achievement seemed to be true across the board: vocabulary stayed at a low level with little color or nuance, pronunciation problems became hardcoded and stubborn, rather than gradually melting away, spoken grammar, in particular, was a real problem, with students rejecting the idea of conjugating tenses and using time expressions instead, note-taking remained pretty poor and dictionary use was nearly unheard of. I have to admit, I began to despair. What could I be doing so wrong in my classes as to have failed to help the students overcome these basic difficulties? We worked on every one of their problems in short, targeted modules of twenty or thirty minutes, aimed at raising awareness and encouraging self-correction, but the following week, we were right back at square one. I spent 5 months encouraging the use of modal verbs, but still received answers such as, “I will maybe go movies tonight,” and, “Remember his books, maybe was better”. Frankly, I was losing it. Then, following a meeting with my colleagues to figure out what on Earth was going on, we hit on the genesis of the whole problem: Absolutely no practice was happening. We came to find that, irrespective of time and effort expended in the classroom, it was the students’ personal time which governed their rate of progress and the growth of their skills. Once they left the classroom, they immediately switched back to L1, and stayed in their home language (and therefore, almost inevitably, their own cultural) environment until

they next walked into the classroom. This was made worse by their housing situation – they lived in L1 groups which never spoke any English, despite residing in a major US city – and worse still by some of my colleagues’ permitting L1 in the classroom. I emphasize this because I did not blame the students for their poor progress -- I blamed the environment we had created for them, and also certain preconditioned learning styles with which they arrived at the school and which proved a major barrier to improvement.

6 STEPS TO ENSURING GREAT PRACTICE

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HELP STUDENTS TO GET RID OF BAD HABITS

Check in often with your students and find out what kind of practice they’ve been doing. This was very revealing in the case of the class I struggled with earlier this year. I found that students were simply writing down the new word ten times, or repeating it out loud, by itself, others were merely listening to their electronic dictionary pronouncing the word without doing either! Once we recognize the habits our students already have, we can steer them towards better methods. I set homework which includes vocabulary practice in sentences. Students sometimes take some convincing that the extra work of producing a new sentence, just to practice one new word, is worthwhile. Realistic sentence practice, though, is a great boost to retention and fluency, as the student has created a situation in which the word is needed: the next time, they might well produce the word spontaneously, and then we’ll be making real progress.

OTHER GOOD HABITS INCLUDE: •

Saying every new word a few times - not for memorization, but for pronunciation, simply to get comfortable with making that particular string of sounds. Isolate the tricky sounds and practice them individually, then practice the whole word. The teacher can help by drilling the pronunciation, so

that the word has been formed and spoken before the students leave the classroom. •

Writing down all new vocabulary in a book specifically for that purpose, and practice each difficult, new word after each class.

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Guessing from context before (or instead of) reaching for a dictionary whenever a new word comes up. The dictionary should be a way to confirm the students’ assumptions and get a clear definition, but it shouldn’t ubiquitously be the first port of call

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A REMINDER OF THE REALITIES

I tried a couple of methods to encourage my students to realize that a language needs practice, like any other skill. Persuading them to view their work in terms of skills acquisition, and not simply the gaining of ‘knowledge’ was an important early step. I played them a YouTube video of the legendary Russian pianist Evgeniy Kissin playing a dazzling masterpiece. They were impressed, of course, despite not being huge fans of classical music. I asked how Kissin had, from nothing, become able to perform with such ease something so obviously difficult. Everyone knew the answer: practice. It was also recognized that, had Kissin not practiced regularly and at length, he would never have become the globe-trotting virtuoso he is today. Establishing this critical causal link, however rudimentary it may seem, is usefully illustrative for your students. Invite your class to come up with their own examples of someone who has put in long, focused hours and achieved a tremendous ability. The same point can be made by watching a talented sportsman, or an interview with a great writer, or someone who seems to be a savant, with an incredible memory, but who simply practiced remembering things until they became uncommonly good at it.

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KEEP A RECORD

I’ve found that students are beginning to lose respect for paper. Ten years ago, it was routine to find all of the semester’s handouts and notes carefully arranged in a labeled binder. Nowadays, I’m seeing more and more scattered, incoherent notes, and dogearned handouts scrunched forlornly at the bottom of schoolbags. Normally, I’d try to fight such changes, but here I think acceptance might work better: ours is a digital age, and the students are digital operators. So, when it comes to keeping a record of what they have achieved, that record must also be digital. Encourage your students to make weekly recordings of themselves reading a paragraph, or just conversing in English with others. A month later, listening to the recording will reveal a change in accent, or an embarrassing mistake, which the student can compare to their contemporary skills set. With luck – and consistent practice – the student will see some improvement.

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CONSISTENCY IS KEY

Many young people are inexperienced in goal-setting and time management. Creating a simple Excel spreadsheet to track their work is a good way to bring some structure to what is often a very disjointed learning style. Daily requirements for speaking, listening, reading and writing are articulated, and can be enjoyably checked off once completed. Repeatedly emphasizing the importance of making this practice a daily ritual might well make the difference between a useful habituation and its patchy, unsatisfactory opposite. There’s a good maxim for this:

ONCE YOU’VE DONE IT FORTY TIMES, IT’S A HABIT.

I believe this is true for almost anything: smoking, meditating, practicing, getting up early, you name it. Of special importance here are reading and writing, for me, the two skills which are most de-emphasized by 21st century students’ learning styles. A daily commitment to reading a few pages, or a chapter, of a book, and to writing a short journal entry or part of

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a blog article, is a healthy way to address these important issues.

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SYNONYMS, ANTONYMS AND COLLOCATIONS

Learning the meaning and spelling of a word is only part of the journey. I always encourage students to write synonyms and antonyms as part of their practice: apart from being useful vocabulary review in its own right, linking the word into a family of similar words provides yet greater contextualization, and obliges the students to consider aspects such as the relative strengths of adjectives (is ‘exhausted’ stronger than ‘tired’, or ‘worn out’?), or the relative register of two verbs (which is more formal, ‘jot down’ or ‘note’?)

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THE DANGER OF ONE-WORD ANSWERS

Sometimes, all we’re looking for is a confirmation that the students know what’s going on. This leads, more often for new teachers than for veterans, to dangerous and misleading situations where the teacher asks, ‘Do you understand?’ This habit is discussed elsewhere on Busyteacher.org, but I’ll add my voice if I may: please never ask this question. You almost certainly won’t get a true answer, it’s an ineffective way of checking understanding, and saying ‘yes’ in a big group is hardly what we mean by production. Here’s a classroom example of avoiding the ‘Do You Understand?’ issue and requiring genuine production. This was a multilingual class whom I knew very well. Teacher: OK, so how’s the weather this morning? Student 1: Cold. Teacher: Really, Zhang? Maybe try for more than one word? Students: [Laughter... this is a theme in my classroom and they’ve heard it many times before] Student 1: Today is cold. Teacher: Did you hear that, guys? A sentence! Student 2: With a verb! Teacher: Indeed so, Mr. Gao. What a wonderful thing that was. Now, how was the weather last night, when you

got home? Student 3: Not so cold. Student 4: Little cold. Teacher: Well, I’ve got three words, then two. Let’s go nuts. Who’s got four? Student 2: It was a little cold last night. Teacher: Heavens above, it’s a miracle! Seven words! I can barely count that high! Students: [Laughter] The teacher made a joke of it, but there is the underlying theme: short utterances are unlikely to convey what you truly mean, don’t really help the person you’re speaking with, and offer an artificially truncated view of your language skills. It may seem as though I’m making fun of my class, but they understand why I do it, both through having seen this method before, and through being aware of my obsession with full sentences and complete answers. I leave them in no doubt that:

PRODUCTION IS PRACTICE and that

PRACTICE MEANS PRODUCTION. I hope that your own students come to this realization, and associate the learning of a language with the producing of it.

Are Your ESL Students Making These 10 Speaking Mistakes? ESL STUDENTS PRACTICE SPEAKING, READING, WRITING AND LISTENING, BUT LET’S FACE IT. IT’S THE SPEAKING THAT PUTS THEM ON THE SPOT. Whether they are foreign executives or stay-at-home moms who want to make new friends, speaking mistakes might make them look bad. Let’s take a look at the most common and see how we can help our students move past them towards better fluency.

10 SPEAKING MISTAKES THAT YOUR ESL STUDENTS NEED TO OVERCOME

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WRONG WORD ORDER FOR QUESTIONS

What I can do to improve my English? Word order might pose a problem for ESL students in general, but when it comes to questions, the mistake is glaring. This type of mistake when asking questions is often accompanied by the wrong intonation (falling instead of rising, in this case) which makes the question sound like a statement or an incomplete sentence.

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COUNTABLE/ UNCOUNTABLE MIXUPS

There was much people at the party. It is very easy to tell when a student has not effectively learned the difference between countable and uncountable nouns. They make mistakes with much, many, a little and a few, and less and fewer, giving us phrases like, “I have a few money”, and “I read much books”.

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WORD CHOICE

I love Disneyworld. It is very funny. There are words that ESL students typically mix up: some are quite similar like fun and funny, or farther and further, and there are others that are easily confused like watch, see and look.

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REPETITION OF THE SUBJECT

My company it is big. Quite often, ESL students use a noun as the subject of the sentence and yet feel compelled to add the pronoun right after it.

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SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT

He have a lot of money. This is a big problem in both speaking and writing. It is very common in ESL learners but a hurdle they should definitely overcome if they want to make a better impression when speaking.

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WRONG PREPOSITION I was born on 1991.

On, at or in? It is one of the most popular questions from students. They use the wrong preposition in so many cases and so often, it is impossible to correct every single one.

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CONFUSING PRONOUNS

My mother told me she broke your leg. “Your mother broke what?”, screeches the ESL teacher. “I can assure you my leg is not broken.” This is one of my favorite mistakes to correct because this confusion gives rise to all types of funny statements, from students claiming to have spent “your” money to reports of parents having cleaned “your” room.

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MISTAKING WORDS THAT ARE SIMILAR IN THEIR NATIVE LANGUAGE My daughter is embarrassed and will have her baby next month. The student’s daughter has nothing to be embarrassed about. The student has made this mistake because the word for pregnant in Spanish is embarazada, and sounds very similar to embarrassed. Each language has words that may sound a lot like words in English but have completely different meanings, and students should be

careful with these. Also similar to this mistake is “inventing” words in English by applying typical patterns (involucrated instead of involved from the Spanish involucrado).

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USING INAPPROPRIATE LANGUAGE

Hi! What’s up? (said to a customer) Even after we get all of the grammatical mistakes out of the way, ESL students still have a hard time figuring out what is appropriate or inappropriate depending on the context.

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USING THE WRONG STRESS

It’s nice to meet you. A student may say something that is perfectly correct, grammatically speaking, but what happens if they put the stress on the wrong word? It may lead to confusion or misunderstanding. Consider the difference between, “He didn’t pay for one lesson” vs “He didn’t pay for one lesson”.

HOW TO HELP OUR STUDENTS MOVE PAST THESE SPEAKING MISTAKES There are two tiers to correcting and improving these mistakes. The first tier is the easiest to attack: it is composed of the typical grammatical errors students can work on through extended practice and worksheets. The second tier involves things that students have a hard time grasping, like the difference between informal and more formal language, intonation and stress, as well as the other nuances of the English language.

HOW TO CORRECT TYPICAL GRAMMAR MISTAKES When it comes to correcting grammar mistakes while students are speaking, every ESL teacher comes to this hard realization: you can’t correct every single mistake. Firstly, it seriously hin-

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ders fluency and does not help boost morale if students are being corrected every few seconds or so. Secondly, it simply can’t be done. Not unless you record what a student says and replay it so you can correct every single mistake. As in most things in life, we need to pick our battles, and here’s how you can choose which grammar mistakes to correct: •

Things they should already know by now, like the conjugation of the third person singular in the simple present (he takes)

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Problems that are shared by several students

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Mistakes that are repeated again and again by the same student

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Mistakes that are connected to the lesson goal (i.e., talk about things that happened in the past)

How can we correct these mistakes in a way that won’t affect overall fluency? Because the student is speaking, and you won’t want to interrupt him or her, the best course of action is to find some way of signaling the mistake. For example, if the same student typically forgets the s in the third person singular, trace an s in the air or flash a card with the letter s when they make this mistake.

HOW TO IMPROVE MISTAKES THAT ARE MORE SUBTLE How does a student come to understand that it’s ok to say something is very expensive, but not very fabulous? How does a student know when to ask, “What’s up?” and when to ask, “How have you been?” One of the keys is exposure. Exposure to the English language, especially outside the ESL classroom. The more ESL students hear native English speakers using expressions correctly, using sarcasm and colloquial phrases, greeting others and making jokes, the easier it will be for them to grasp these differences and start using them themselves. In addition to exposure, role plays are instrumental in teaching proper intonation, word stress and the use of appropriate expressions. I recommend:

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Letting a pair of students carry out the role play as presented to them

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Taking notes while they speak

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Congratulating them on their efforts

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Offering praise for something they did particularly well (use of set phrases)

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Offering suggestions for improvement or correcting mistakes (used the right expression but with the wrong intonation, for example)

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Asking them to try it again, keeping the suggestions/corrections in mind

SPEAKING IS OFTEN A SOURCE OF GREAT FRUSTRATION FOR ESL LEARNERS. While our job is to correct their mistakes, we must also strive to do so in an encouraging and supportive environment. Instead of focusing on correcting mistakes, let’s help them achieve better fluency.

Make Them Talk: 5 Taboo Subjects for Teen Conversation Class NO MATTER WHAT CULTURE YOU ARE TEACHING, IT IS PROBABLE THAT, IF YOU TEACH BEGINNER TO INTERMEDIATE LEVEL YOUNG TEENS (13-17 YEAR OLDS), YOU FIND THAT THEY ARE SUDDENLY SHY, UNRESPONSIVE, DO NOT LIKE LISTENING, AND EVEN RUDE SOMETIMES.

These universal teen traits often make the ESL conversation instructor’s normal tricks useless. What topics keep them interested and break the barriers? A strategy is to work with the rebellion/burgeoning independence, “badness”, need for peer acceptance, and curiosity that come with the age. Try presenting some of these “taboo” conversation questions in class. For this to work, the ESL instructor needs to first establish trust and a sense of camaraderie that gets them to share. Put the questions, or similar ones related to the categories, on little cards and pass them out. Have the students sit in a circle and read their questions and begin the conversation topics one by one. If they do not respond naturally, introduce an example, preferably something personal, even if you are inventing it! If they still do not respond, poll them to begin and offshoot questions from the poll results.

TRY THESE 5 TABOO SUBJECTS FOR YOUR NEXT TEEN CONVERSATION CLASS

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LYING AND CHEATING

They all lie and most have cheated on a test and feel better when they hear about someone else that has done the same. Two conversation starter questions are: • Have you ever lied to your mom or dad? Why? About what? • Have you ever cheated on a test? Which subject? If they do not respond right away, tell them you cheated on your algebra test in ninth grade because you could not memorize the equations! They will relate. If that still does not work, ask the question as a poll. This is a good way to get the class started with gradual sharing.

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How many of you have cheated on a test? Then pick on a few with their hands raised and ask which subjects. This will definitely open up a conversation that engages them about which subjects are hard to study! Polling works for any of these subjects.

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TREATING PEOPLE POORLY AND REGRETTING IT

We have all treated our little brother poorly and felt bad later, especially at this moody age. Usually we do not apologize and try to forget about it, but it feels good to admit the transgression and can be very humorous when we talk about it. • What was something you said or did to someone that you regretted later? How did it make you feel? This focuses on past tense and is great for practicing feelings vocabulary. A starter example is “I ate the piece of cake my brother put in the refrigerator. I felt bad when he told me he brought it home for my grandmother.”

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GHOSTS AND PARANORMAL

Ask them about paranormal experiences and occult beliefs. Teens of this age are trying to cope with identifying with beliefs and faiths and like talking about and exploring different ideas. Ghosts and the paranormal is lighter subject matter than God existing or heavy religious banter, however, and usually are very engaging subjects for teens. At minimum, you will get one or two students to tell stories to which everyone will listen. They are curious what their peers believe. TheTwilight series, horror movies, and other occult films all are marketed to teens for a reason! • Have you ever seen a ghost? Where? What did it look like? • Do you believe in astrology? What sign are you? • Do you think vampires exist? Do you know one? • Can you tell the future? Do you know someone who can? This practices storytelling, as well as past, present, and future tense. It will bring up some good new vocabulary for the students as well!

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SECRET CRUSHES

They all have secret crushes at this age and like to pester each other about it. If you want to keep the conversation light, focus on pop stars/athletes. If the students know each other better, you could ask a general question about the perfect boy/girlfriend. These questions will practice traits vocabulary, “if I could” conditional, and can create additional conversations about sports, music, and TV. • If you could meet someone you have a secret crush on, who would it be? • What is your perfect girlfriend like? • Do you have a boyfriend? What does he look like?

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PERSONAL APPEARANCE

All teens feel awkward in their bodies, and, with constant Facebook and media exposure globally, they compare themselves to famous people and wish they could look different somehow! This is a very funny conversation topic for students of this age if you keep it light – focus on who they think is most beautiful and why instead of making it too personal. This subject will practice describing people, present and conditional tenses, and will end up being a good vocabulary lesson. • Who is the most beautiful person in the world? Why? • Which is more attractive – to be a little fat or too skinny? • How much make up is too much – or is there never too much? • Do actresses show too much skin on TV? • If you could change anything about yourself, what would you change?

IF YOU ARE TRYING TO GET TEENS TO TALK, AND ARE STUMPED, TRY SOME OF THESE TOPICS! You will find that not only will they participate, but they will also listen. Furthermore, your students will be begging for the new vocabulary to communicate their thoughts. We have to try to relate on the level of our students if we want them to learn how to communicate, so have fun doing so and be a teen again with them!

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6 Ways to Turn Bad Word Explanations into a Conversation Class THIS HAPPENS TO EVERY ESL TEACHER. STUDENTS WILL ASK YOU WHAT VULGAR WORDS MEAN IN ENGLISH. Ignoring them might work for a while, but it is best to approach the subject professionally and offer an explanation for the word or phrase or question. Here are 6 ways to broach the slippery subject and even turn it into an interesting conversation class.

TRY THESE 6 WAYS TO TURN BAD WORD EXPLANATIONS INTO A CONVERSATION CLASS

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WHAT THE ****?

In English, especially in American English, we know it is a serious faux pox to use certain four letter words, even to the point where it is illegal in public media. They are powerful expletives though that attract attention, hence why we use them in common speech and why students want to know what they mean. •

Write the list of vulgar words for them horizontally on the board, and explain that they are very strong communication tools, yes, but usually carry a negative and even angry tone. Alternatively, a speaker can attract attention from creative speech.

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Task students to think of 3 words that rhyme with each vulgar word that have positive or humorous meanings like “duck”, “spit”, and “spell”. Place a box or hat under each vulgar word and have them write their three rhyme words on small papers and place in each box.

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Then, write common expressions like “what the ****” on the board and have students take turns selecting papers at random from the boxes and inserting their silly/positive words in the expressions.

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YOU’RE SUCH A…

English speakers can be quite confrontational and get involved with nasty name calling either directly to someone in anger or behind someone’s back. These mean names are heard on TV, movies, songs, and on the street.

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Students will ask you what they mean. If they do, be prepared and explain that it is never nice to use these words, and would it not be better if we lived in a world where people only said nice things about others? • Give students a homework assignment to open their ears and record five nice things people say to each other on the street or in pop culture if you do not live in an English speaking country. • Provide examples like, “You’re such a sweetie!” or “She’s so bubbly!” It will help them focus on positive aspects of colloquial language, and you will have a great conversation class the next week when they explain where they heard these words!

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GET DOWN

Pick a particularly vulgar word heavy dance song, better if it is one students know, and even better yet if it is one they hear on the radio often. • Print the lyrics and play the song, asking students to circle what they assume are colloquial words. • Then, go through the song and rewrite the bad words with less vulgar words that have a more lighthearted connotation after explaining what they mean. Ask students first what they think the words mean. Older teenagers are probably just trying to embarrass you by asking what they mean, so embarrass them instead! • Play the song again and have students sing/read along with the new language. This activity will result in an engaging conversation and vocabulary lesson.

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CUT!

Show a clip from a popular “R” rated movie with bad language, like a gangster film, preferably one they have seen. • Download and print a transcript of the dialogue and show the clip with subtitles. • Have them circle the bad words while watching. • Then discuss how those words were used in the film by the speakers to relay meaning, add significance to speech, etc.

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EMBRACE IT

For your older teens or young adults, embrace the swear words and teach them how to use them properly in conversation. Write down commonly used swear expressions, like “what the hell” and “that pissed me off”, on papers with definitions on the back, and have students in pairs come to the front of the class and draw one each from a box. Ask them to try to use the phrases in a quick dialogue together. For example, they could say: • “What the hell? He didn’t give you a birthday present?” • “No! It really pissed me off.” Students can work in pairs or groups to invent a dialogue at their desks first if you think they will need more time to consider the phrases.

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YOU TELL ME WHAT IT MEANS

Alternatively, embrace the swear or colloquial words by asking students to write down three that they hear on the street or in music/on TV for homework and to try to discover what they mean by asking other English speakers they know. • Have the students put the words on different papers with the definitions on the back, and ask them to place them in a box when they enter class that day. • Students can take turns picking words out of the box and reading the definitions. If the definition is wrong, correct it. • Then, ask the student to try to use the word in a sentence appropriately. If she cannot, find out where the contributor heard the word and what type of reaction the definer of the word had when she asked him/ her about it!

IT CAN BE AN EMBARRASSING MOMENT FOR YOU OR FOR YOUR CLASS WHEN STUDENTS ASK WHAT THOSE FOUR LETTER WORDS MEAN. Now you can turn it around into a fun activity that engages their English learning skills and helps them practice conversation! The oral power that makes these words so popular can help energize your class and engage your students.

6 Activities to Use TV to Teach When Slang is Appropriate NATIVE SPEAKERS, EVEN THE MOST EDUCATED AND REFINED, REGULARLY USE SLANG IN CONVERSATION. In fact, we unconsciously hone slang depending on the cultural situation in which we are. Demonstrating those situations through TV can be particularly helpful in your ESL/EFL conversation course, especially when students are trying to reach a more fluent conversational level. The following are six activities that use TV to teach EFL students when certain slang is not only acceptable, but appropriate.

HOW TO TEACH EFL STUDENTS WHEN SLANG IS APPROPRIATE

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BE COOL

To be accepted in a social group, we need to be cool, and, to be cooler, we incorporate slang modifiers into conversation. Teenagers might use more slang modifiers than educated adults, but educated adults do use them as well, especially in relating to their teen offspring. Cool, awesome, and all of their slang modifier cousins are important words to incorporate into the EFL student’s vocabulary. Use any of a number of teen TV shows and pick a scene heavy in “cool” and “uncool” speak. Glee is a perfect choice. Prepare a list of slang words students will hear and ask them to mark which words/phrases are “cool” and which mean “uncool”. Discuss the right answers.

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IT’LL BE ALRIGHT

We use slang when we are comforting someone confiding in us about something negative that happened to her, or something about which she is scared or worried. We break out clichés and colloquial speech as a familiarity cultural tool to help soothe. TV is full of emotionally dramatic situations between confidantes: nearly any prime time sitcom or drama has at least one scene per episode of people in crisis. Pick a moment between friends or

relatives, preferably women as they receive more emotional dialogue time. Use a dialogue between Lily and Robin in How I Met Your Mother, for example. This activity will work better if it is a short three minute clip that you can show a few times. Find the transcript. Blank out the confiding/comfort slang, and ask students to try to fill in the words they hear as you play the clip. Play it twice. Then, go over what the phrases were and what they mean in formal English.

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OH MY GOD!

EFL learners need to understand slang to express surprise. Conversation with natives will be impossible to comprehend otherwise. Pick a TV clip where an actor is revealing a crazy event to a group and they react. Nearly any coffeehouse scene from Friends where all six are together works. Have students write the surprise expressions they heard on the board, and then brainstorm additional expressions they know or have heard in other places as well. Afterwards, have them practice using expressions in conversation. Ask each student to tell a partner the craziest thing that happened to him the week before. His partner should react with a surprise idiom, like “Wow, that’s crazy!” They should write down the conversation, switch roles, and repeat.

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TELLING STORIES AT THE OFFICE

Generally, maintaining formality at the office is a good rule of thumb. If your EFL learners do so all the time, however, they will have no friends, confidantes, or allies. Every workplace thrives on comic relief periodically throughout the day with people gossiping or telling stories. Those are the moments when people use slang in the workplace. Teach your students to identify informal moments and appropriately react to them by listening for slang. Show a TV clip from The Office (almost any) that has two scenes contrasting formal and informal language, Angela with Dwight and then with Mi-

chael, for example. Doctor shows are good for this as well, to contrast how doctors talk to patients and then to colleagues in the break room. Ask students in a discussion afterwards which slang words indicate an informal break.

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WHAT UP?

Slang greetings have varying levels of formality, and it is important to know what the formality level is to respond appropriately. Show any TV clip where people are greeting each other. A party scene with different social levels of people is probably a more helpful tool than a work setting. Use the clip as a launching point to discuss different greeting language. Write as many greetings as they can think of, from the clip and from their encounters with English from other places, on the board. Ask students to rate each based on a formality meter of one to five, one being informal and five being formal. Then, ask them one by one to respond to the greetings. If you ask “What up?” they should reply “Not much” instead of “I am well” or a more formal response.

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I DIG HER

Romance and sexual language is full of slang and can make an extremely fun conversation class! Keep it light by showing a dialogue clip from a PG TV show, one with teenagers talking about crushes or young love is ideal. Charlie explaining relationships to his nephew in Two and a Half Men would work. Students should pick out how slang is used to talk about romance. Then, separate the class into two groups and ask the students to form two lines. Throw out different slang romance terms, like “I dig her” and “she’s tripping”. The groups should take turns guessing how to translate the terms to plain English.

WE FOCUS MOST OF OUR TEACHING TIME ON PROPER GRAMMAR AND DICTIONARY WORDS, BUT, IN REAL LIFE, KNOWING SLANG AND WHEN TO USE IT WILL AID YOUR EFL STUDENTS. Students will dig these exercises!

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Tweaking Speaking: 5 Ideas for Presentations DID YOU KNOW THAT PUBLIC SPEAKING IS THE #1 FEAR IN NORTH AMERICA? THE SECOND GREATEST FEAR IS DEATH! The thought of giving a presentation is scary enough for native speakers, but for ESL students, speaking in front of a group of people in a second language is even more nerve-wracking. Many students have a tendency to freeze when they are “on stage”, which can result in robotic like recitations of memorized speeches or an overreliance on notes that leads to reading aloud rather than speaking freely. One of the things we as teachers can do to help students progress as speakers in front of an audience is to design stimulating and fun presentation topics. Hopefully, the more engaged students are with their topic, the more they will relax and deliver a presentation that flows more naturally.

TRY THESE 5 PRESENTATION IDEAS WITH YOUR STUDENTS

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POSTER PRESENTATIONS

Some students are deeply frightened at the prospect of presenting in front of their peers and teachers. One of the ways that instructors can ease students into the role of presenter is to create a poster session in which each student has the opportunity to share ideas with a small audience multiple times. Poster sessions work great for just about any topic, and they allow students to create a visual aid that they can then explain to a rotating audience. Students can hang their posters on the walls around a room and have visitors (perhaps students from another class) mingle and browse. When people stop to see a poster, the creator has an opportunity to present the information they have included on their poster to a small group in a more relaxed setting. Then, the student has the chance to do it again when the next visitor stops by to take a look, allowing the student to present the same information multiple times, hopefully getting better and better with each “mini-presentation.”

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IMPROMPTU SITUATIONS

Your students will really enjoy fun and creative, even silly, impromptu speaking tasks, as scary as they may seem at first. If a teacher is working on developing speaking skills with students, a great daily warm-up is to write down various scenarios or topics, cut them into strips, and have students randomly choose one. Topics can be serious or wacky -- the important thing is that students are talking! The more practice students have with delivering even short, random, speaking exercises in front of a group, the more comfortable they will ultimately be when it comes time to deliver planned, formal presentations. Here are some examples: • Pretend you are an ant, try to convince an anteater not to eat you! • Explain how to ask a girl on a date. • Pretend that you have just seen a dinosaur in New York City, try to get someone to believe you!

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HAVE STUDENTS CREATE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL DOCUMENTARIES If a course is long enough, having students collaborate on a mini-documentary can be an excellent way to unleash their creativity. Working in groups or individually, students can design and produce a video that explores their own lives or the lives of someone else, famous or unknown. This fun, engaging project can be a long-term one that students work on over a significant period of time, or it can be designed as a shorter task that students create in a few days. If time is really limited, students can do a presentation on how they would plan and approach making a documentary, rather than actually producing it.

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5 TIPS ABOUT SOMETHING FAMILIAR

Students get most excited about content that is relevant to their own lives. Some of the pressure that students feel

when giving a presentation can be alleviated by ensuring that the topic is something that they are already knowledgeable about. Creating a presentation assignment in which students offer “5 Tips” to their classmates can be a great way to get students excited about presenting. This is a great way to allow students to display their individuality, too. Teachers can provide a list of potential topics in case students get stuck when trying to decide what to present about, but many students will be eager to share their expertise about a topic of their own choosing.

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ASSIGN CLASS VISITS

For academic, college-preparatory ESL programs, designing an assignment in which students visit regular university courses can be an exciting and eye-opening opportunity. When students are able to witness the academic environment that they will eventually fully be a part of, they are able to better understand the importance of the preparation that they need to do to develop the requisite proficiency to undertake study at an international institution of higher learning. Once students have visited one or two academic classes, they can prepare a short presentation, answering targeted questions, and share the experience with their classmates. Students will benefit not only from their own class visits, but also from hearing about their classmates’ experiences.

PRESENTATIONS ARE INEVITABLE PART OF A SPEAKING CURRICULUM, BUT THEY CAN OFTEN LEAVE STUDENTS FRAUGHT WITH ANXIETY.

By creating fun, guided speaking presentation assignments, students can grow more comfortable with speaking in front of an audience. Be sure to give students some say in the topic that they chose: the more personal interest a student has in what they will present about, the easier it will be to get excited about doing so!

Using The News: 7 Steps to Fantastic Student Presentations I’M GETTING WORRIED ABOUT SOMETHING I’VE NOTICED IN MY CLASSROOM.

My 16-25 year old students are smart, enthusiastic and tech-savvy, but very often I find a real lack of ‘worldliness’ and I think the ESL classroom is a great place to fill those gaps. I’m talking about knowing the names of the world’s continents and countries, and of major political, religious and historical figures. Just as importantly, students need to be aware of world events, familiar with the major trends and philosophies of our time, and conversant in the topic areas which will dominate this century, and their lives. A recent survey of my high-level class revealed – to my amazement, I have to admit – that Twitter had become their main news source. Even more surprisingly, many could not name a cable news anchor, or a respected print journalist, or any more than a handful of the world’s great newspapers and journals. I’m the first to recognize that the digital age is driving our students’ media consumption. It’s just that I’m worried they’re missing out on great journalism, on incisive commentary and on that in-depth analysis which really helps us to understand the world around us. This demands reading skills, of course. It also requires the confidence to open a newspaper, or click on an online article from The Economist or Britain’s excellent Guardian, unruffled by the high-level vocabulary and structures, and simply willing to give it a try. News-reading depends also on tackling something younger people are being trained to avoid: lengthy articles which require sustained focus. With practice, these problems fall away, allowing students to read the full range of scholarly and journalistic material, thereby enriching both their life experience and their language skills. To meet this problem head-on, I developed a weekly 90-minute exercise to train newspaper reading, summa-

rizing and presentation skills. Students have found this challenging and informative, and have grown more confident when discussing complex themes and international events. Just as importantly, this training has removed barriers which prevent broader, deeper reading, and awoken a more open-minded consciousness -- the gaining of a more global awareness helps to mitigate prejudice, and alleviates the students’ fear of the unknown. Beyond initial setup, the teachers’ role is largely supervisory, giving the students plenty of independence. The requirement to present to their classmates gives good reasons for them to carefully prepare. Here’s how it can be done:

TRY THESE 7 STEPS TO FANTASTIC STUDENT PRESENTATIONS USING THE NEWS

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STRENGTHEN YOUR NEWS BACKGROUND

A useful, initial step is to ensure that your own understanding of world trends is in good shape. When a news story breaks, consider whether you could describe why this might have happened, and what effects it could have. Check that you know the basics on the major world leaders, the systems of government in the leading nations, and the names and recent activities of the biggest companies. Anticipate questions the students might ask when something big happens.

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GET THE LATEST INTEL

The evening before class, or ideally at the beginning of the school day, browse the news and tease out between four and seven stories. Try to pick events which will be relevant to your students, which will have a global impact, or which connect with topic areas you’ve recently discussed. Check for interesting stories in these

areas, among others: • Elections (major campaign speeches, accusations of voterigging, predictions, results) • Government policies (security, environment, society, business, drugs, personal freedom) • International Affairs (agreements, conflicts, treaties, wars of words, presidential visits) • Sports Events (major trophies, broken records, scandals, transfers, new managers) • Celebrity news (marriages, breakups, awards, troubles, new projects, the Twittersphere) • Obituaries (former leaders and royalty, influential business people and academics, artists) •

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Science (ISS events and space launches, discoveries, controversies, publications, awards) Extreme weather (hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, unusual or unseasonal weather) Entertainment (new movie, album and book releases, popular plays, important concerts) Technology (new releases, predictions about the future, customer comments, controversies) Business (mergers/acquisitions, successes, bankruptcies, major appointments, scandals) Environment (signs of global warming, geo-engineering proposals, debates)

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WRITE SHORT QUESTIONS

A one-page handout detailing the stories, perhaps accompanied by hints on good sources, will enable students to start researching immediately. Typical questions include: • “The Chinese government announced a relaxation of the onechild policy this week. Why has this happened? Tell us about the current demographics in China and how this policy might affect Chinese society.” • “India launched a spacecraft to Mars yesterday. Give the class a short history of Mars exploration

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– are there any particularly successful probes? How many have failed? What does the Indian mission hope to achieve?” “The investment bank J P Morgan is being fined $2.6 billion for its role in the Bernie Madoff scandal. Briefly summarize this infamous Ponzi scheme. Why was the bank found to be at fault? Who will receive the money?”

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PAIR UP AND CHOOSE FAVORITES

Research can be done alone, but I find that pairs or groups of three permits a more ‘integrated skills’ environment: the students read, write down notes, discuss the story and listen to what their partners have found. Once the groups are established, I let the students choose two stories (a favorite and a backup) and then use varying methods to decide who gets to choose first: age (in descending or ascending order), name (alphabetical or reverse), order they arrived at school, etc.

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INFORMATION FLOW

As the groups research, encourage the constant sharing of their findings, and plenty of note-taking. Ensure the students use their own words when taking notes, rather than copying verbatim from the news source. Assist in finding good sources, and avoiding disreputable, biased or poorquality reporting: the ability to make these distinctions is a skill in itself, and many students need help with this. Once the notes look complete and useful, the students should organize their presentation and plan so that the speaking is divided equally.

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PRESENTATION TIME

Ensure the ‘audience’ is listening (computers closed, phones away, pens down) and encourage the students to speak clearly and slowly, avoiding new or overly technical vocabulary. Clarify and check words, names and concepts as needed. Ask a couple of comprehension questions.

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QUESTION TIME

Invite questions at the end of the presentation, and take time to discuss the news event with the class: are there any strong feelings about

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it? Try to bring in everyone, inviting opinions and predictions. Enthusiastic applause should conclude each presentation.

I HOPE THIS PROVES USEFUL IN HELPING STUDENTS TO DISCARD THEIR FEAR OF READING, IN DEVELOPING THEIR SUMMARIZING AND PRESENTATION SKILLS, AND IN EXPANDING THEIR HORIZONS.

7 Ways to Motivate your Students to Speak Out IT IS COMMONPLACE IN THE ESL CLASSROOM FOR STUDENTS TO BE MORE RELUCTANT WHEN IT COMES TO SPEAKING.

While they excel in the other skills, they find it difficult to speak, not because they do not know how to, but because they are afraid to do so. This is even more problematic when it comes to older learners and adults as there is the common fear of making a fool of themselves in front of their peers. There are, of course those more unique learners who will try to dominate the ESL classroom when it comes to speaking, however, more often than not this is not the case and when it does happen it also limits the less confident learners. What they need more than instruction is confidence and the motivation to speak out in class and not be afraid to do so. As ESL teachers it not only our duty to teach, but it is also our duty to motivate our learners to speak out and participate. We need to help reduce their fears and provide a comfortable environment for them to learn and to make them feel more at ease. Speaking is by far the most important skill needed when it comes to ESL learning. Speaking is everywhere in real life and even though the learners may be able to avoid skills such as reading and writing English in real life, it is not the case with speaking. So how can we motivate our learners to really love speaking English? What can we do to help reduce fear and give them the confidence they really need? Those students who have more of a positive attitude when it comes to language learning will be less likely to suffer from performance and learning anxiety thus making them participate more. Here are a couple of useful tips and techniques that you as an ESL teacher could implement in the classroom to help those more reluctant to speak out.

GIVE LANGUAGE LEARNERS ENOUGH CONFIDENCE TO SPEAK

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REDUCE LEVELS OF DIFFICULTY

In most cases we want to challenge our learners – we want to push them to the next level and excel. We want to maintain their interest by making exercises more challenging so the learners do not grow complacent and bored. However, this should be the opposite for speaking, as students already have less confidence when it comes down to it. If the teacher reduces the levels slightly at the beginning, the students will feel less pressure and therefore they will be more motivated to speak.

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SHARE EXPERIENCES

Sometimes ESL course books are way off when it comes to being realistic. If the ESL student can realistically relate to what has been asked and has the knowledge to answer about it, they will have a lot more confidence, therefore, it is important for the teacher to tailor the lessons and adapt the course book material. Imagine an adult learner discussing their favorite subjects at school – it just does not work. Students will be more motivated when they see that the teacher has taken into consideration their needs and interests and have included them somehow in the lesson. Teachers are advised to collect information via needs analysis and surveys at the beginning of a session for a number of reasons, and other than finding out what they already know, finding out their interests and needs to base their lessons on comes in closely at second in terms of importance.

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TOLERANCE OF L1 USAGE

Imagine going into a language class for the first time where the language is completely foreign to you such as Japanese or Arabic. Imagine

in the first class having to introduce yourself in this language and having to communicate – impossible? You will naturally feel insecure, ill at ease and unhappy about the situation – the majority of participants would most likely clam up and be more reluctant to speak. In lower levels of any language the learners do not have enough of the language to communicate and express their ideas or opinions. Although this goes against the main idea of ESL teaching, it does hold some truth – let them speak some of their L1. There have been some teachers who have demanded absolutely no other language other than in English in the classroom – the result? A very quiet classroom. Teachers need to try and be a little bit more compassionate and tolerant when learners use their L1, especially if they are trying to understand through another student. If we make the learners feel humiliated or ashamed of using their L1 to help their L2 the chances are they are likely to say nothing. However, there are of course some times when learners take advantage of the situation and use their L1 when it is not necessary – in this case, it is the task of the teacher to guide the students back to communicating in English.

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DON’T INTERRUPT

Students, when speaking their L2 get distracted easily, they lose their train of thought and not to mention their confidence is knocked if the teacher is constantly interrupting them. Imagine having every second word corrected for pronunciation, grammar, usage and so on – it would be more than frustrating. Instead let your learners speak freely without interruptions and if they make mistakes, note them down and address them in class later. When addressing the class with regards to spoken errors, collate the most common and important ones (not every tiny detail needs to be addressed) and give a mini workshop to the entire class and not just one student. If one student makes a mistake in speaking, the chances are that oth-

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ers will make the same mistakes too. At the end of the day if the students are allowed to continue speaking without being interrupted, they will not associate speaking with a negative experience.

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EQUALITY

It is a common thing for the teacher to split their class into small groups for speaking and communicative activities. However, teachers often make the mistake of not defining the roles and there will always be one or two students who are more vocal than the others thus the conversation or activity will be dominated by just a few people and as a result the other students will feel like they do not have a specific role, they will not feel motivated to participate - and why should they, when they have not been given a purpose? Make sure your groups are equally divided for speaking and communicative activities so everyone can participate.

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FOLLOW-UP WITH MORE QUESTIONS

Students will often give a short or inadequate answer because they cannot think of anything to say. They feel under pressure and it is much easier to give up and appear lazy rather than admit they cannot do it. If your students give short answers it could actually be that they have nothing else to say on the issue or they do not have the language or confidence to express themselves for longer periods of time. Students hate it when teachers prompt them by giving one or two words at the beginning of the answer – it makes them feel like they are children. Instead help your learners by asking them relevant follow-up questions to what they have already said.

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TIME FACTOR

We need to take into consideration how long it takes to think of something in another language, process it and verbalize it – when learning new languages, the words will never just flow out of their mouths. Mistakes will be made and confidence will be low therefore it is absolutely essential for teachers to remember that learning a new language is a developmental process. There are so many different factors involved when it comes to ac-

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quiring a new language and things of course, need to be put into perspective. Sadly, the ESL teacher sometimes lacks patience. Do not just jump in and finish the sentence for them and do not immediately redirect the question to another student – through this you will just give them more inhibitions and insecurities when it comes to speaking English. Time is what they need and tell them this. Use the phrases “take your time” or “I’ll give you a moment to think about it.” Such phrases will take the pressure off and they will be able to think more clearly.

TO CONCLUDE, SPEAKING IS THE MOST DIFFICULT SKILL TO MASTER AND MANY TEACHERS ARE UNDER FALSE IMPRESSIONS WHEN IT COMES TO SPEAKING IN THE ESL CLASSROOM. They believe that simply by observing and listening to their teacher the students will be able to speak – this could not be further from the truth. Speaking takes more practice and it does require a lot more confidence as it involves real-time comprehension and reaction. A lot of time needs to be spent on speaking and when working with lower levels or shier students more patience is needed to give them that little positive push in the right direction.

How To Energize Your Bored Students With This Great Game JEOPARDY IS A PERFECT ESL CLASSROOM ACTIVITY FOR ANY LEVEL, ANY SIZE OF GROUP, AND ANY TOPIC AREA.

It’s extremely adaptable and can be used for almost limitless purposes: • Review of the day’s material, or before a test • Check understanding of key concepts and terms • Diagnostic tests, to help draw up a syllabus or decide the students’ level • Quizzing the students’ general knowledge, either to discover weak areas, or just for fun • Build team spirit and an atmosphere of healthy competition In adapting this much-loved institution to the ESL classroom, I’ve found some ways to keep it simple while retaining its ever-so-useful flexibility. I generally omit the cryptic word-play aspects, sticking to easily comprehended categories. I also do without the tradition of beginning the answer with ‘What is...’, preferring to vary between requiring short, factual answers and longer, explanatory responses. Double Jeopardy comes only at a pre-determined time (down to the exact minute), chosen at random by the teacher at the beginning of the game, and kept as a surprise. My students have absolutely loved it, and I’m sure this simple but thoroughly enjoyable game could find a place in virtually any class. The teamwork aspect is something I’ve come to emphasize. Students are asked, at the outset, to discover their teammates’ strongest and weakest topic areas (be it business, geography, history, culture, or sport). Answers must then be reached by consensus, after a period of quiet, hurried discussion, so that no single student dominates proceedings. Between rounds of the regular game, additional rounds add to this discursive aspect, requiring students to choose a numerical answer: they must persuade, reject, agree and modify opinions in a fastpaced exchange of language.

SETUP PROCEDURE

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With classes of up to 8-9 students, I normally organize two teams, while larger classes might have three. More teams than this could slow down the game too much, resulting in frustrations. The teams could be selected in many ways, but here are some favorites: • Assign each student a number (1, 2 or 3) or a letter (A, B or C) • Give the teams a name, and assign students this way: “Peng? You’re in Ravenclaw. Martina? Please join Gryffindor”, etc. Sports teams, tree species, names of mountains, almost anything can be used. • Select a team captain to pick students one by one to join their team. Be aware that the students last to be picked might take this personally, just like we all did in high school! • Boys versus Girls, provided that it wouldn’t cause unhelpful levels of class division! • I don’t recommend organizing mixed-nationality ESL classes into national teams, or continent teams. Apart from the obvious danger of encouraging nationalistic fervor (a China versus Japan setup, for example, could have dire consequences for class harmony!) I’ve found that the most successful teams include people from a variety of backgrounds.

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INTRODUCTORY ROUND

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Before the game proper begins, consider a first round which encourages teamwork and communication. I’ve found success in asking the students to guess a numerical answer, and then awarding $500 to the closest response. This could also be the format of alternative rounds, played between the main rounds. Good questions might include: • What’s the height of the world’s tallest mountain? (8848m – Mt. Everest)

How many national neighbors does China have? (14 – don’t forget Bhutan!) How long was the longest ever stay in space? (437 days, Valeri Polyakov from Russia) How many countries have English as their official language? (60)

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POSSIBLE SUBJECT AREAS I’ve simply been writing three topics on the board, and then $200, $400 and $600 in a column beneath each one. I explain that greater rewards mean more challenging questions. Here are some of the topic areas I have found most useful to include, based both on my students’ abilities and the gaps I’ve found in their knowledge: remember that Jeopardy can inform as well as review.

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VOCABULARY

Ask for three (or five, or ten) synonyms for a given word. Try: nice, beautiful, old, big, small. Similarly, ask for antonyms, e,g. “Give me five opposites of ‘placid’”. Ask for a definition of a recentlylearned word, or one which the students might be able to puzzle out, based on other words they know. “Remember how a ‘psycho’ is a crazy person? What work do you think a ‘psychotherapist’ does?” Provide a definition and ask which word this relates to, e.g. “How do we call a building where you can borrow books?” or “What word do we use for the Jewish house of worship?” Ask for a set of adjectives to describe a given object, person or place, given in ascending order of strength (e.g. good – awesome – tremendous – unimprovable), or register (cute – pretty – attractive – elegant), or level, basic to advanced (big – huge – gigantic – titanic - monstrous).

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GRAMMAR

Begin a sentence using a recently-learned structure, and ask the students to complete it, e.g. “If I hadn’t bought the lottery ticket...” Provide a sentence and ask which tense is being used. “’Sheila has been complaining about our noisy neighbors for six months’. Which tense am I using, team B?” Ask for a sentence using two modal verbs, perhaps one in the past and the other in the present. Ask for an explanation of why a particular tense is used, e.g. “Why might I use the future perfect?”, or, “In what situation might someone use the past continuous with ‘when’?” Ask for a sentence which uses a particular tense, e.g. “I’d like a question in the future simple, please,” or, “Let me have a past perfect continuous passive.” Ask for combinations of grammar points in one newly-composed sentence, e.g. “Let us hear a sentence which includes two apostrophes, a modal verb and finishes with a tag question.”

These questions are often really very challenging, and require the students to think about grammar in an unusual way: explaining and justifying its use, rather than simply creating accurate examples or (at a lower level) completing controlled, gap-fill type exercises. Verbalizing these contexts has genuinely helped my students to see the rationale for using sophisticated grammar.

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Ask for a brief biography of a famous business person Ask in which country a multinational has its headquarters Ask for the meanings of acronyms (WTO, NAFTA, AIG, SEC) Ask for brief descriptions of important pieces of business-related legislation Ask for marketing tag-lines or celebrities who endorse a particular product Ask which currencies are used in some given countries

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BUSINESS

GEOGRAPHY

Ask about the names of rivers which flow through given cities Ask in which city certain land-

marks might be found Ask which languages one might hear on a journey from A to B (e.g. along the Mediterranean coast from Haifa to Gibraltar) Ask which states you might drive through to travel from one US city to another Ask for three (or five, or ten) countries in a given continent

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Ask when a certain event happened (perhaps accepting answers plus or minus a few years) Ask how long a certain figure was president, or monarch Ask for the names of five twentieth century US presidents Ask which products a certain country became famous for trading during a given century Ask when a certain law was passed, and give bonus money for extra detail Ask for a short biography of a historical figure

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CULTURE

Ask for the name of the director, or actors, involved in a given movie Ask for the author of a famous book, or ask which books a certain author wrote Ask the students to name three albums by a famous band Ask where a certain museum is located, and what it’s famous for Sing a famous TV theme tune and ask which show it’s from Show a picture of a celebrity and ask for their most important achievements

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HISTORY

SCIENCE

Ask for the names of the planets of the solar system (in order, perhaps including some moons) Ask which chemical element is represented by some given symbols (O, He, W, etc) Ask who invented the steam engine, the practical electric light bulb, the TV, etc Ask from which country certain inventions emanated (gunpowder from China, etc) Ask students to explain a natural phenomenon: why is the sky blue? Why are there longest and shortest days of the year? Why do

we build expensive particle accelerators?

THE SKY IS THE LIMIT.

I play this version of Jeopardy at least once a week, and it never fails to engender team spirit and enthusiasm, as well as reviewing important material and plugging some gaps in the students’ general knowledge. I hope you’ll give it a try!

Speak Speak Speak: 3 More Activities To Motivate Students to Speak ONE OF THE GREATEST CHALLENGES WE FACE AS EFL TEACHERS IS GETTING OUR STUDENTS TO ACTUALLY USE THE LANGUAGE IN CLASS. Many students are very shy about using English, worried about their grammar, accent, or many other mistakes. Because fluency is so important for daily communication in any language, we as teachers need to find some way to get them talking. Reward systems and tying class attitude and behaviour scores to participation certainly helps address this problem, but forced participation is never as productive as when participation voluntary. To this end, it is worth the teacher’s time to use speaking activities that get the students excited and participating for that reason instead of coercion. Games are one of the best ways to accomplish voluntary participation, even among the lower level and shy students. Adding an element of competition, especially on an individual basis, encourages students to try their best and helps them lose their inhibitions around speaking English in front of their peers. So here are three tried and tested speaking games that have proven to be effective and a ton of fun.

GET YOUR STUDENTS TALKING IN NO TIME USING THESE ACTIVITIES

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MATCHING ACTIVITY

This activity only really works for topics in which there are specific answers for specific questions or specific responses to certain situations. Some preparation is required on the part of the teacher. Create a set of question/situations and the correct answers/responses. For a class of 30 it’s best to have 15 of each. Print four or five sets of these (more for advanced classes) and cut them up so that each question, situation, answer, or response is on its own small slip of paper. Be sure that you keep them in sets. In class, hand out one set of answers and one set of questions. Students then circulate and try to find the counterpart to their card. When they do, they find a teacher and read out the question and response as a dialogue. If they are correct the teacher marks each of their slips (the students keep the completed slips) and hands them two new slips from the next

set of questions and answers. Students then go and try to find a match for their new slips. Mark the slips to make sure students do not try to use the same slip to match with several different people. The marks also serve as points. Continue this process for either a set time limit or until all of the slips have been handed out. When the activity is over the student with the most marked slips is the winner. For higher level classes, stipulate that all communication when trying to find their partner must be done in English.

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PYRAMID GAME

This game requires very little preparation on the teacher’s part. All that is really needed is four increasingly complicated dialogue pieces. To help with student clarity, I either draw a pyramid on the board, or have one on a presentation slide. Divide it into four levels. Each level is associated with a two or four line piece of target language that the students have learned in the unit. From the bottom to the top they should be easiest to hardest. All students start at the bottom and must work their way up. They do this by finding another student on their level and going through the dialogue together. If one student can’t complete their part of the dialogue they remain on that level and their opponent advances to the next level. If they both successfully complete their half of the dialogue, they play rock, paper, scissors to decide who advances. Once they have completed all four levels , they come and find the teacher. The teacher can ask them any question from the entire unit, or preceding units for high level classes. If the student gets it correct they play rock, paper, scissors against the teacher. If the student wins they are a winner. If they lose they go back to the bottom level. Continue the game until you reach a pre-set number of winners. Some versions of this game associate each level with an animal or action. The students who are on that level must act like the animal so they can locate one another. To extend the amount of time this game takes, the loser of each battle can go down a level. Also, if a student playing rock, paper, scissors against the teacher loses, the entire class goes back to level one. This game can be very difficult to monitor, as the students are all over the classroom and all talking at once. One method to help with this is to have the students police themselves. Tell them

that if they see pairs playing rock, paper, scissors without first completing the dialogue they can tell you and you move the students down a level and require them to complete a dialogue set in front of you to advance. Also, emphasise that if one person cannot complete the dialogue then the other person advances without any need to go through the rock, paper, scissors process. Students seem to appreciate the element of luck that rock, paper, scissors introduces into this activity.

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SENTENCE ELIMINATION GAME

This game is one that works especially well for low level classes as it does not require using English freely. The teacher must prepare a presentation with one sentence on each slide. I usually create a conversation based on the topic and using the dialogue the students have most recently learned. Ideally, use relatively short sentences. If you can get several one or two word responses in there it keeps the students on their toes. To make things more interesting you can add several other picture slides between the sentence slides. One is simple an ‘out’ slide. If a student gets that slide on their turn they are out. One is a slide that does not affect the student that gets it but the one who is next. If that student is still in the game, then they are out. If they were already out then they are in. The final kind is a random action (make kids jump and say something or whatever). They must do it within five seconds or they are out. Whatever you do, you will need at least one slide per student with a few extras. Once in class, have all students stand up. Set an order among them. When each student’s turn comes they have the choice of reading one or two words from the sentence on the screen. Not more or less. Whoever is forced to read the last word of the sentence is out. Depending on what other slides you have included, there is also a sense of randomness whenever you change the slide. Keep going until there is only one student still standing. They are the winner.

I HAVE FOUND THESE GAMES ARE GREAT WAYS TO GET THE STUDENTS SPEAKING FOR THE LAST HALF OF CLASS. I usually tell them there will be a game if they are well behaved and participate and that increases the speaking level even before the game comes out.

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Use It Or Lose It: 8 Awesome Activities To Encourage Initiative MANAGING STUDENT PARTICIPATION IS A BIG DEAL IN THE ESL CLASSROOM, AND MAXIMIZING IT IS NO EASY TASK.

Many of our ESL students are even reluctant to participate. They are perfectly content with answering yes or no and just sitting there quietly. But let’s get real, they are not going to learn like that, at least not to use the language. Using the target language as much as possible is the key to learning any language. The activities we build into our lessons fit our lesson topics and goals. The objective of these activities is for students to learn to use the language and to interact in ways that will help them in real life. It is important to include a good variety of activities to suit the situations your students will be in outside the classroom. These activities have to focus on the transactional use of the language, where the goal is to make social connections. No matter how hard your students work, they are not going to do it on their own. Put the ball in their court and make them sweat a little. Do you want to know how? Take a look at these great student initiative activities.

PRACTICE INTERACTIONS Practicing interactions is an all time favorite activity when you want your students to become familiar with real life social exchanges. Interacting with others is a natural part of social life and because of that, they are a natural choice when you want your ESL students to practice absolutely anything from vocabulary to language functions to structures. There are different types of interactive activities you can use in your lessons. Let’s take a look at a few.

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ROLE PLAYS

Role plays give students opportunities to communicate within near-to authentic situations. They can take a considerable amount of class time, so it is important to plan ahead and also to make sure your students know

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what they need to do. In role plays the situations need to be set up by the teacher, but it is the students who need to make all the choices. Some examples are: • Setting up meetings • Making travel arrangements • Talking about oneself in a social event • Ordering meals. • Giving instructions. Etc

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BASIC EXCHANGES

Short exchanges are also popular and much more common. They usually require a lot less time but these exchanges don’t give students much freedom since it is the teacher who tells students what to say. These are a good choice when you want your students to practice language functions. Look at the following example. A: Hi, how are you. I’m Mike. B: Hi Mike, I’m Maria. In this example they are practicing greetings but the list goes on and on.

MAKE USE OF DESCRIPTIONS Descriptions are activities without any kind of interaction. Here students are given instructions to talk about or describe something. The objective is for them to go over specific language goals already covered. Of course preparation is needed in advance, no matter what the student’s level is. If the students are beginners, a model could be provided by the teacher. If students are in higher levels, you can just say: “talk to me about this situation/ the picture in your book”. Let’s take a look at some great activities.

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DESCRIBING THINGS

The student can describe objects in the classroom or in their office while others guess what those objects are.

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DESCRIBING SEQUENCES

You provide picture sequences of a situation. There are two options

here. They can simply talk about the sequences frame by frame to describe the situation or you can cut out the frames and have them put them in order first and describe them later.

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USING QUESTIONS

Ask them questions to lead them into a description. For instance: What do you do in the morning? What did you do in your last vacation? What would you do if you were asked to relocate?

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DESCRIBING ARTICLES

Cut out headlines from the paper. They need to be related to the topic you are working on, of course. Give each student a headline and ask them to tell you what they think that article is about.

APPLY QUESTIONS We have already cover this topic in other articles but let’s go over some things again. Questions are of utmost importance for students. In real life they will also need to ask questions, not only answer them. Through questions ESL students understand how auxiliaries work and how to use them. There are many different types of activities you can use to practice questions. Let’s take a look at some.

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ASKING ABOUT PICTURES

Show your students a picture and have them ask you or other students questions about it.

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ASKING CLASSMATES

Point to one of the students and say, “Diego had party last week. Ask him about it”. Have the other students ask “Diego” about the party.

DON’T LET YOUR STUDENTS GET LAZY. Combine different types of activities and provide meaningful contexts for each. Remind them that hard work pays off.

35 Print And Go Discussion Starters: The Secret Weapon QUICK! YOU HAVE NO TIME TO PREPARE BUT NEED TO FILL A FEW MINUTES IN CLASS… YOU WANT YOUR STUDENTS TO GET SOME SPEAKING PRACTICE IN, BUT YOU JUST DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START… You need something to warm up your class before you dig deep in today’s lesson plans... What do you do? With these print and go discussion starters for your ESL students, none of these situations will stress you out. You will always be ready to get your students talking, no preparation required. Just print and go.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS

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SIBLINGS

Do you have brothers and sisters? Describe one of them. Are you an only child? What did it feel like having no brothers and sisters? Do you think it’s better to have a large family or a small one? Why? Tell your partner about your ideal future family.

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PARENTS

What does it take to be a good mother or father? What do you appreciate most about your parents? What do you wish was different about your parents? What is one way you want to be like them when you have children?

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FAMILY TIME

Some families have a regular time to be together such as family game night. What do you like to do with your family? How do you spend time together? What is something you would like to do with your family but have not done up until this point?

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BEST FRIENDS

Who is your best friend? How did you meet? Why is that person important in your life?

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ANIMALS

Do you own a pet? Tell your partner about him or her. What type of pet do you want to own in the future? Why? What type of pet do you never want to own? Why not?

DAY IN AND DAY OUT

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A REASON TO LEARN

Why are you studying English? What brought you to this program? What do you want to do with English when you have finished school?

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DAILY HABITS

What are some things you do every day? What if you couldn’t do them? Tell your partner how your life would be different.

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MORNING AND NIGHT

Are you a morning person or a night person? How do you know? What happens if you have to be somewhere or do something during the time you prefer to sleep? Tell your partner about it.

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MY FAVORITE MEAL

What do you like to eat? Why? Tell your partner about your perfect meal. What does it include? Who has prepared it? Who will eat it with you?

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I HAVE TO HAVE…

Think of something you use every day. Describe it to your partner, but do not tell him what it is. After you have described it, have your partner guess what the object is.

HOBBIES AND FREE TIME

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A DAY OFF

What is your favorite thing to do on a Saturday or a day off from school or work? Describe your favor-

ite past time. How does someone get started with that hobby?

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CAMPING

Have you ever been camping? What was it like? If you have never been camping, what do you think it is like? Do you want to go? Why or why not? What would you be sure to bring with you on a camping trip?

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YOU’RE A PRO

What do you know about that others might not? What can you tell others about that topic? What do they need to know?

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EXPERT INSTRUCTION

Everyone is an expert at something. Tell your partner how to do something that you are an expert at.

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FEELING FINE

What makes you happy? Why? How do you include that thing in your life?

GETTING PERSONAL

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SEE ME AFTER CLASS

What do you want to do when you are finished with your schooling? How will learning English help you in those plans?

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PRIZED POSSESSIONS

What is the most valuable thing you own? Is it valuable because of its monetary worth or because of what it means to you? Tell your partner about that object and why it is so valuable.

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ACCIDENTS HAPPEN

Have you ever been in an accident? What was it like? If not, how do you avoid getting into accidents? What are the most important things you can do to be safe?

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MAKING FRIENDS

Do you like to meet new people? Why or why not? How do you get to know someone new? Are you introvert or an extrovert? How do you know?

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DRESSING UP

What kinds of clothes do you like to wear? Why? Tell your partner about your perfect outfit and what you like to do when wearing it.

GETTING EMOTIONAL

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I WAS FRIGHTENED WHEN…

Think about a time when you were scared. Tell your partner about that experience. How does that experience influence who you are today?

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I WAS ANGRY WHEN…

Think about a time when you were angry. Tell your partner about that experience. How does that experience influence who you are today?

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I WAS JEALOUS WHEN…

Think about a time when you were jealous. Tell your partner about that experience. How does that experience influence who you are today?

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I WAS EXCITED WHEN…

Think about a time when you were excited. Tell your partner about that experience. How does that experience influence who you are today?

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I WAS SAD WHEN…

Think about a time when you were sad. Tell your partner about that experience. How does that experience influence who you are today?

REMEMBER THAT

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BEAUTIFUL PLACES

What is the most beautiful place you have ever been? Tell your partner about it. Do you think you will ever go back there?

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INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE

Who is the person who has had the most influence on you in your life? Tell your partner about that person. How have they helped make you the person you are today?

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THROUGH A CHILD’S EYES

What do you remember about being a child? What is one of your best memories? Share it with your partner. What is one of your worst memories? Share it with your partner.

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GET MOVING

Have you ever had to move from one home to another? What was the experience like? Share everything you remember about it with your partner.

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GETTING AWAY

Have you ever taken a vacation? Where did you go? What did you do? Do you think you will ever go back there again? Why or why not?

IMAGINE THAT Note these discussion starters are for students who have studied conditionals.

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A DESERTED ISLAND

If you were trapped on a deserted island all alone, what is the first thing you would do? What would you want to have with you? What would you miss most?

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A BETTER WORLD

If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be? How would your change make the world a better place?

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DINNER GUESTS

If you could have dinner with any person in the world, living or dead, who would it be? Why would you choose that person? Describe to your partner what your dinner conversation would be like.

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HINDSIGHT IS… They say that hindsight is

20/20 meaning you always know what is right or best after an event has happened. What is one thing you wish you had done differently in your past? How does hindsight make the experience easier to understand? How would you behave differently now that you know what you know?

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REMEMBER WHEN…

Imagine you stumble into a time machine and travel 100 years into the future. The machine breaks, and you cannot return to your own time. What would you do? What do you think the world would be like? What would you miss most about your own time?

YOU DID IT. YOU FILLED THE UNPLANNED TIME. You got your students talking. You got them ready for today’s lesson. Now on to something new tomorrow! After all, you still have plenty of things to talk about.

The Ideal ESL Role Play In 5 Easy Steps PICTURE THIS.

You just spent 40 minutes presenting and practicing a bunch of new vocabulary to your students. They seem to have understood and can answer questions using these new words. But, how can you know for certain? At this stage it would be important for them to prove they are comfortable with this new material, and the best way to do this is with some type of activity. This is where role plays come in handy Why, you might ask? Take a look. • They encourage thinking and creativity • They allow students to develop and practice new language and behavioral skills. • They can create the motivation and involvement necessary for real learning to occur. OK, so we now know why they are useful, but as we all know, anything worth doing is worth doing well. We need a good procedure for setting up a role-play, after all we can’t just throw a role card at our students and say: “OK, you are Role Card A, and you are Role Card B. Go!” A well set up role play makes students feel safe and facilitates the process. Take a look at these awesome steps that can help you set up your role play.

MAKE SURE YOU FOLLOW THESE 5 STEPS TO OUTSTANDING ROLEPLAY

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PREPARATION

Most activities in the ESL classroom require some type of warm up. To prepare students, you can use illustrations, flashcards, photos, pictures and even graphs and charts in the case of business students. The images you are using should be related to the situation in the role play. Your students describe what they see in the pictures and then have a brief discussion. It is a good idea to review or teach useful vocabulary, grammar and phrases at this point, so that your students have all the necessary tools to

engage in an amazing fluency based activity without trouble.

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ENACTMENT 1

So, now it’s time for your students to act out the role play. To help them, you need to create the scene and assign the roles to each of the students. Give them a few minutes to gather their thoughts and plan ahead. If the group is able to handle it, you can even add some kind of ‘conflict’ or ‘complication’. Since students should focus more on fluency at this moment, it is advisable for teachers to take notes on mistakes made by students. These mistakes will be addressed later, during the feedback session but not during the role play. Students should not be interrupted for corrections during the enactment. It is important to mention that role plays can include more than two students. If it is a group course, you can even involve the whole class. Those types of role plays are actually much more fun but remember to keep it organized. There are different ways in which a class can participate together. You can either create different roles for each student in the same situation, or while two students are interacting, the teacher can instruct others to whisper information to them or even to stop the role play and ask another student to take over one of the roles.

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comfortable, you can have your students switch roles or if there were more than two roles, reassign them among the students. It is possible to make other changes that might suit their needs as well.

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FEEDBACK 2 AND FOLLOW UP

Once again, students analyze their performance and the teacher adds comments and necessary corrections. Now is a good time for follow up work. Homework or some type of follow up activity is ideal here since it is a great way to reinforce any loose ends detected during enactments. These activities can focus on specific areas or if nothing specific needs to be addressed, it can be a general closing exercise.

ROLE PLAYS ARE A GREAT WAY TO GET YOUR STUDENTS TALKING.

By using the language they will be in better shape to retain what they are learning. Keep in mind we all learn by doing. Use role plays in your classroom and prepare your students to go out into the real world.

FEEDBACK 1

Keep in mind that any kind of feedback should always be positive and constructive. In order to encourage self-correction you can write incorrect phrases on the board and they can reconsider their choices.

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ENACTMENT 2

After reviewing and analyzing what they have done during enactment 1, a second enactment is often a great choice. That way students have a second chance to officially change the choices they made in the beginning. Also, since they will feel more

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How To Create Your Own RolePlays: 4 Quick Tips THE MOST REWARDING PART OF LANGUAGE LEARNING, FOR MANY STUDENTS, COMES AT THAT MOMENT OF SPONTANEOUS, UNREHEARSED PRODUCTION. They’ve learned the vocabulary and the structures, and can pass the tests, but now they find themselves vociferously arguing a point, or taking a key role in a dynamic discussion, surprised at their own confidence and fluency. The boost is tremendous: it could literally change the course of the student’s education, and lead to exciting possibilities. Role-play allows a class to debate a sensitive or controversial point without the bruising emotional experience of expressing a minority opinion or putting their reputation on the line. Rather than dealing with genuine and weighty real-world issues, we can use imagination and a convincing ‘manmade’ environment to emulate reality, like in a movie or video game. Such environments are infinitely flexible, permitting customization and nuance which respond to our students’ beliefs, provoke debate in an unthreatening format, and invite everyone to participate equally. There are no limits to how a role-play might operate. The students might be defending a policy, or trying to persuade their group to accept change. It could be a life or death decision. Or it could just be the advocating of a new technology they think would sell well. Perhaps they’re representing a badly treated jungle tribe, or a maligned CEO, reeling from the latest scandal. They could take the role of a historical figure, or a contemporary leader, or someone not yet born. Creating these environments has been one of the most enjoyable and productive aspects of my ESL career. Inventing your own role-plays is timeconsuming, and demands care and attention, but once created, you’ll have a superb platform for genuine and passionate student interaction. Students who might be shy of airing their

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own views, and therefore not likely to produce as much as we’d like, find themselves in a safe place, and with a role they can embody by actually maximizing their production. Learners who are used to a single point of view, or who are trained in black-andwhite thinking, can find themselves challenged to embody the opposite view, and to engage with the nuances of those oh-so-important gray areas. The role-play itself becomes a valuable, shared experience which aids integration and unity within the class. I really can’t recommend this enough: try the steps below, and create your own role-play.

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CONSIDER YOUR CLASS

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What interests them? What gets them talking? Listen for issues which come up repeatedly, or cause debate or disagreement. Tap into the students’ hobbies and backgrounds, the subjects they’re planning to study at college, or topics raised in movies they’ve recently seen.

SELECT A SKILLS AREA

Review what they already know and focus on one or two skills which either need review, or have yet to flourish. Consider recent language points – tenses, modals, conditionals, plurals, comparisons, measure expressions, modifiers, etc – and assess which of these might both benefit from review and might usefully be practiced in a role-play environment. Here are some possibilities, with ‘meta-questions’ to help you choose a particular narrative or role-play context:

TRY THESE 4 METHODS FOR CREATING SUPER ENGAGING ROLE-PLAYS

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GROUP DECISION MAKING

Which policy should we choose? Which person should we hire? Which of these choices is the most efficient / risky / popular / profitable?

How can we make sure everyone benefits from this policy? What regulations are needed to keep this community safe? Which version of this idea is the best / most appropriate / least dangerous?

• •

Grammar points might include: • Comparatives: “This solution to this crisis is better than the UN idea, because...” • Language for agreement and disagreement: “How can you support the new fishing law, when...” Modifiers and adjectives: “This proposal is outstanding, but this one is absolutely terrible.”

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• • • •

NEGOTIATION:

How can we solve this problem together? How can we share these resources most equitably? How can we develop trust between our two groups? How should we appropriately compensate these people? How should this group of visitors spend their time in the best way?

Grammar points will include: • Agreement and disagreement: “That may look like a good solution, but I think...” • Requesting and persuading: “This proposal is not well balanced, but would you consider...” • Prioritizing and balancing: “That’s significant, but it is far more important that we address...

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• • • •

DESIGN:

Which kind of marketing would appeal to this target group? What style of syllabus is appropriate for these students? How should we spend time on this outing? How should we organize this exhibition? Which building style is the most environmentally friendly?

Grammar points might include:

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•

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Adjectives and metaphors: “If it’s a rounder shape it might seem more friendly...” Objections and persuasion: “I’m not sure that’ll get the message across, but what about...” Comparatives: “That seems a more efficient way than the first one we thought of...”

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I hope that this helps you to try creating some of your own role-plays, and to enjoyably guiding your students to greater production and confidence!

REPRESENTING A CHARACTER:

Depending on the role-play context, students could take a character and express their point of view. Examples could include: • A Business Role-play: Manager, employee, accountant, consultant, safety officer, PR specialist • A Technology Role-play: Designer, sales director, consumer consultant, researcher • A Politics/Government Role-play: President, cabinet member, activist, journalist, cleric, scientist • A Crisis Management Role-play: Local mayor, police chief, victim, regulator, lawyer

EXAMPLES: One of my favorite role-play tasks was to create four fictional cities, each with different characteristics, and have the students decide which one would be most suitable to hold an Olympic Games. One had a crime problem, another had a substandard transport network, another had problems with protestors from a local ethnic group, etc. Once the situation was analyzed, groups represented each city in a bid to persuade the IOC (their teacher) to vote for them, and to discredit the other cities. Another favorite was a complex negotiation between two countries who are on the brink of war. Long-term mistrust and continual skirmishing is (hopefully!) put aside while issues such as sharing resources, allowing access to a holy site, forming a nonaggression treaty and arranging a technology exchange are discussed. The final package was a nuanced mix of give and take, spiced up by the two groups having deliberately lied to each other on crucial points. It never fails to arouse passions and lead to huge amounts of language production.

NOW TRY IT YOURSELF!

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5 Ways to Make Talking about Me about Everyone HARVARD RESEARCH SHOWS THAT OUR BRAINS ARE MORE ACTIVE WHEN WE TALK ABOUT OURSELVES.

Go around in a circle and see who can remember the most correct answers. He/she gets a prize.

Hence it is probably the most engaging way to have students practice conversation. We obviously do it naturally when we are teaching one-on-one, but it can be boring to listen to others talk about themselves, and students often lose interest when one-on-one conversation is employed in a group conversation class. So how can we make “talking about me” into “talking about you” to scratch that brain itch while involving everyone? Here are five strategies.

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DISCOVER AWESOME WAYS OF ENGAGING YOUR STUDENTS IN CONVERSATION

The groups share the results with the class: everyone will have to speak.

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USE ARTICLES ABOUT GENERAL HUMAN NATURE

Find brief research articles online about human nature. Examples include a study scientists performed about how we sleep more in winter, or how women prefer talking in groups and men on-one-one. Hand out five questions about themselves and how they relate to the article designed on a slide or handout beforehand. Read the article. Have them write their answers to the questions first, and then go around in a circle and discuss. For a big class, divide them into groups of two or three.

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MAKE IT A GAME WITH STAKES

Design a memory game where they have to remember what each person says in response to a question. For beginners, use basic questions like favorite color or ice cream flavor. For more advanced students, you can ask about an experience in their youth or something more complex. Students write down their answer and one by one tell the class.

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SET UP AN INTERVIEW SESSION

Bring a list of questions for students about each other, i.e. personal questions about family, work, what they like to do on the weekend, whatever you are studying or want to practice! Hand it out to each student. Students use the sheets to interview each other in small groups or pairs.

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GIVE A “FIX A PROBLEM” SCENARIO

Create a scenario where you ask students to solve a problem that relates to their lives or their town/country (something you know is important to them). For example, ask them, “If you could add two new stores to your town, what would they be and why?” Have them write down the answers in a few minutes. Separate them into groups of two and make them discuss their answers and pick one from each list. They will have to reason out their answers together and come to consensus. Have the pairs share with the larger group discussing why they chose their two stores from four options.

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TAKE POLLS/SURVEYS

Design a list of opinion polling questions about a topic, like opinions about climate change, or opinions about movies. For example, if you use climate change, ask 1) Do you notice warming in your country? 2) Are polar bears really necessary to biodiversity?, etc. Record how many say yes and how

many say no to each question. Discuss the group consensus/average opinion and encourage debate! If the same two students are opinion heavy, switch to another question or call on quieter students.

THESE ARE JUST FIVE TOOLS TO ENCOURAGE STUDENTS TO THINK AND TALK ABOUT THEMSELVES WHILE APPLYING THAT THINKING IN THE CONTEXT OF A LARGER GROUP TO KEEP YOUR CONVERSATION FLOWING AND TO ENSURE THAT EVERYONE STAYS INVOLVED. After all, talking about “me” is only interesting if there is a “you” to listen. Sometimes we need to structure responses to make that reality clear!

5 Activities To Get The Conversation Started With Your Students MAKING SMALL TALK IS MORE THAN JUST GETTING TO KNOW SOMEONE NEW. IT IS AN EXPECTED PART OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR. MAKING SMALL TALK ISN’T ALWAYS EASY, THOUGH, ESPECIALLY FOR ESL STUDENTS. Speakers must meet certain expectations and must talk about appropriate subjects. These subjects are different from one culture to another, so small talk, which may once have come naturally, must now be intentional. These activities will give your students a chance to practice what to say when they’re face to face with someone new and want to get the conversation started.

TRY THESE 5 SMALL TALK ACTIVITIES TO GET THE CONVERSATION STARTED WITH YOUR STUDENTS

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TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER

Talking about the weather is one of the simplest ways to make chitchat or small talk with someone you don’t know very well. Depending on the fluency level of your students, they may already be comfortable talking about the weather or they may need a more extensive review before they can jump right in to small talk. Once your students are weather knowledgeable, though, there are several ways to have a conversation about weather. A speaker might ask his companion what they think about the weather and then respond to what that persons says. The speaker might also make their own observations about the weather and then let his companion comment on his thoughts. Put students in pairs to practice both strategies of weather chit chat. Make sure each person has a chance to start a conversation both ways during the activity.

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ASKING PERSONAL QUESTIONS

Asking personal questions is a great way to make chitchat, but the questions should never be too personal. To help your students see the difference, brainstorm a list of personal questions you might ask someone you have just met. As you brainstorm, sort these questions into two columns – mildly personal questions and highly personal questions (those that

might make the speaker very emotional). As you brainstorm and sort, help your students see how the highly personal questions might make someone uncomfortable, especially with someone they have just met. Be sure to point out that, to English speakers, politics, age, weight, and income are all highly personal topics and should not be discussed while making chitchat. Encourage your students to use the mildly personal questions to start a conversation with someone new before the next class. Then discuss how the real life small talk went.

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CURRENT EVENTS

Current events are another great topic for casual conversation. Did you hear about... Did you see... What do you think about... are all great ways to introduce current events in a casual conversation. Have your students work with a partner to write 10 questions starting with one of these or another similar phrases that introduce current events into a conversation. Then, combine pairs to make groups of four and have the groups use the questions they wrote to make small talk with their new group members.

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SOMETHING IN COMMON

Another strategy for small talk and chitchat is to find something in common with a person you have just met. This may be more of a challenge for ESL students because they cannot rely on preplanned questions like they may be able to in other small talk strategies. Still, once students are comfortable talking about their own interests, they may be able to talk about those interests with an English speaker. Start by having students write down between five and ten of their interests. These might be a certain type of music, a hobby, something they collect, something they like to do, any interest that another person might share is good. They should be able to talk about that topic when making small talk with another person, but only if that person is also interested in the topic. To find common ground with someone else, your students can ask questions like these: What do you do in your free time? What kind of music do you like? Did you do anything interesting this weekend? As a class brainstorm a list of other questions your students could ask someone else to learn about their interests and hobbies.

Once you have your questions, position your students in two lines facing one another (think speed dating style) to practice finding common interests. Tell students they will have two minutes to find something in common with the person sitting across from them. After two minutes, you will call time and everyone will shift one seat to their right. (The last person on each row will move to the first seat at the other end.) Give your students two minute intervals to talk to their classmates. Keep timing them until everyone is once again facing their original partner. After the activity, discuss with your class how effective it was. Were your students able to find common interests during their conversations? If possible, invite a native English speaking class to your classroom and repeat the activity with them.

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GO SPORTS!

For English speakers, sports is another go to topic for chitchat and small talk. People who choose to talk about sports, though, must have some knowledge of the topic to hold an intelligent conversation. What does your class already know about sports in your area? Can they name the professional teams? Do they know what sports are most popular in your area of the country? Take some time as a class to discuss local sports and regional interests. Is your town a baseball town? A football city? A hockey town? Are the people of your area basketball fans? Is there something else that excites sports fans near you? Once you have all the teams and interests written down, divide your class into groups – one for each sport – to give an informational presentation on the sport and the team. Presentations should include information about the team and the basic rules of the sport. If possible, have groups show a video clip from their sport to give your class a point of reference.

MAKING SMALL TALK IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CAN BE INTIMIDATING, BUT LESS SO WHEN YOU HAVE THE PROPER TOOLS FOR THE JOB. These activities will give your students the knowledge and experience they need, along with a few handy phrases, to make conversation with anyone off the street. Who knows? They just might find a friend in the bargain!

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It’s Not a Problem: 4 Out of the Ordinary Advice Giving Activities MODAL VERBS MAKE FREQUENT APPEARANCES IN ESL CLASSROOMS, AND ONE OF THE MOST COMMON USES FOR MODALS IN ENGLISH IS GIVING ADVICE. Advice giving can be straightforward. Someone has a problem and here is how they can fix it, but sometimes straightforward is a bit predictable. If you are looking for some out of the ordinary ways to practice giving advice with your students (and using modal verbs), try one of the following activities.

PRACTICE ADVICE GIVING IN A NEW WAY

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HOT ADVICE

Sit your students in a circle for this advice giving version of hot potato. In this game, you will announce to your students a situation for which someone might need advice. (You may use these or similar situations: I had a car accident. My boyfriend broke up with me. I didn’t study for today’s test. I was mugged. I lost my wallet.) Each round, you will also designate an advice giving starter. (Choose one of the following: You should..., You could..., You might want to..., My advice is..., If I were you, I would..., I might try..., If I was in your place, I would...) The first person in the circle will use the designated advice phrase to offer a piece of advice. Then, the person sitting to his left will offer a different piece of advice for the same situation. Play continues around the circle until someone cannot think of a new or different piece of advice. That person is then out, and you move on to the next round. For this round, give a different situation and assign a different advice giving phrase. Again, the first person who cannot think of a unique piece of advice is out. The rounds continue in the same manner until only one person is left in the circle.

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WHAT’S MY PROBLEM?

In this pair work activity, students will try and guess a problem based

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on the advice they receive. One person thinks of a problem that his partner might have. It should be a realistic problem that an ESL student could face. (Avoid problems like a giant gorilla carries you to the top of the Empire State Building.) That person then gives one piece of advice for that problem to his partner. He can use any modal verb he feels is appropriate. The second student should then try and guess what problem she supposedly has. If she does not guess the problem correctly, the first student gives another piece of advice. The second guesses at the problem again. Students continue in that pattern until the second student guesses her supposed problem. Then, students switch roles and play again.

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COMPARING COUNCIL GAME

Who in your class is the best at giving advice? Your students will find out in this advice giving game modeled after Apples to Apples. As a class, brainstorm as many possible problems a person might have that you can. Depending on your class, you may want to limit the time you spend on this part of the game or just let it go until the class runs out of ideas. During the brainstorming, whenever a student suggests a problem and it sounds good to you and the class, have that person write the problem on a blank index card. Once you have a list of at least 30 problems and cards for each one, it’s time to think about solutions to the problems. Have students work in groups of three to come up with advice they might give for the brainstormed problems. Each problem will need five different pieces of advice. Again, students should write these on blank index cards. You should divide the thirty problems among the groups in your class. When all the advice has been written down, you should have 150 index cards with possible advice. Now the game is ready to play. Shuffle all the problem cards together, and shuffle all the advice cards together in two separate piles. Play the game in groups of around ten students. Start by dealing five advice cards to each stu-

dent. Then have one student choose a problem card from the top of the deck. That student reads the problem to the other players. Those players must then choose what they think the best advice card they hold in their hand for the problematic situation. They should put these cards face down on the table. The person who read the problem gathers the face down advice cards, gives them a quick shuffle, and lays them face up on the table reading each one as she lays it down. She then chooses the card that she thinks has the best advice. Whoever laid that card down gets a point, and all the other cards are removed from the table. The next person in the circle chooses a problem card and this round plays the same as the first. Play continues until one person has five points and wins the game along with the title of best advice giver in the class.

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PROBLEM AND ADVICE BINGO

Bingo is one of my favorite games to play in the ESL classroom. It challenges students to listen carefully and make connections between language and pictures, numbers, or whatever is on the bingo card in front of them. In this version, students will match problems with advice to score a five in a row win. If you created the index cards for the Comparing Council Game, you can use them again in this activity. Start by giving each student a blank bingo board and asking him to write a piece of advice in each open square. If possible, the advice should be somewhat general: it might apply to more than one situation. (Useful advice might be you should talk to the person about it, you could try and earn some money, or you had better get in shape.) Students should write their advice in full sentences using modal verbs. Once they have finished, it’s time to play bingo. Using the problem cards your class already created, choose one problem at a time and read it to your class. Students should scan the advice on their bingo card to see if any of it would apply to the problematic situation. If so,

she should mark that space on her card and write an advice giving sentence on a separate piece of paper. (If you have a car accident, you should call the police.) Continue drawing one problem card at a time and giving students a chance to write sentences using the advice on their bingo boards. When someone gets five in a row, she calls bingo. She must then read her sentences to the class. If they agree that she has given good advice, she wins. If the class thinks some of her advice is too farfetched, she removes that marker from her card and play resumes until someone has five in a row.

IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR SOME UNUSUAL ACTIVITIES FOR PRACTICING ADVICE GIVING WITH YOUR STUDENTS, THESE GAMES MIGHT BE JUST WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. TRY ONE (OR MORE THAN ONE) AND SEE WHO IN YOUR CLASS HAS THE BEST ADVICE TO SHARE.

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Repeat, Reuse, Review: Stepping Stones to Fluency THERE CAME A POINT LAST SEMESTER IN MY INTERMEDIATE ESL CLASS WHEN I WAS SHOCKED TO HEAR MY STUDENTS USING CONDITIONAL “IF” CLAUSES WITH A FAIR AMOUNT OF ACCURACY AND FLUENCY: “IF I HAVE TIME THIS WEEKEND, I’LL CLEAN MY HOUSE” AND EVEN THE MORE COMPLEX “I WOULDN’T DO THAT IF I WERE YOU.” I was really impressed. How did they do that? These intermediate students who had been the U.S. for years, in some cases, had some conversational English but very little academic English or more “advanced” grammar. Then I remembered. Well, they knew how to use the conditional because I had taught it in class. It seems strange that a teacher would be surprised that a student would actually know something the teacher herself had taught, but there is that element of shock sometimes in seeing progress in students because so much of what we teach in English classes goes unlearned (begging the question if we really taught it). This lack of learning of the “taught” curriculum occurs for a variety of reasons, primary among them the need for more practice than students generally get in an ESL class. Some of the students in this class were native-born Americans, or had lived here for many years, yet they remain intermediate English learners because they spend most of their time in their cultural communities and were not able to use English much of the day. Given these circumstances of many ESL students’ lives, the teacher’s job in ensuring students actually learn what is taught becomes harder to accomplish, but it is possible to make sure that students get adequate practice of English to progress. Mainly, students cannot be introduced to a structure such as the conditional and be expected to learn it from limited exposure. Rather, the instructor must set up conditions to repeat, reuse, reformulate, and review the material.

REPEAT, REUSE, REVIEW: STEPPING STONES TO FLUENCY 28

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TEACH: MODEL

The first step in ensuring student learning is to explicitly teach the material. Adult students in particular generally have to have a structure such as the conditional explicitly introduced, discussed, and clearly modeled with numerous examples, both orally and visually. They may not respond well to more implicit or indirect instruction that is sometimes used with younger learners, who may learn their second language much like their first. To further process the structure, adult students must be able to ask questions about it: which forms of it are correct, how it may be used, what situations it can be used in, and so forth. Toward the end of a session in which the target form has been introduced, the instructor can begin asking questions of volunteers in the target form: for example, “What will you do tomorrow if it rains?” and “Where would you have gone if you hadn’t moved to California?” Hearing and responding to questions such as these gives students some initial exposure to and practice with the form. They can also ask and answer questions of each other in pairs and small groups for more practice.

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REPEAT AND REUSE

The material must be continually repeated if students are to learn it. The instruction of a form like the conditional, which is widely used throughout academic English for discussing hypothetical situations, should not stop at the end of a single lesson: the material should be repeated and reused the next day--and the next. Students will not be bored, usually, when, the day after the introduction of the conditional, they are asked at the beginning of class “What are you going to do if your last class of the day is cancelled?” Such repetition, a little each day, further reinforces learning and ensures that students will acquire the form.

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REFORMULATE

Students at some point begin using the form on their own, without teacher prompting, showing that acquisition of the material is taking place. Teachers can use the opportunity of hearing stu-

dents using the newly learned material on their own by extending the discussion for further practice: for example, “Oh, so you’ll go home for a visit if you get the time this winter break. What else will you do, if you have the time and money?” provides a chance for an exchange using the target form in a different but still common context.

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REVIEW

After two or three weeks of practice of the curriculum, the real and unreal conditional, in this case, there will often be a unit quiz on the material. Preparation of the quiz is a good opportunity to spend the better portion of a class session reviewing its varying uses--depending on the level of the student--of the conditional: both the real and unreal forms, as well as use in varying tenses. Students can practice in different group formations: individually, in pairs, and in small groups, reviewing both written and spoken material.

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REVISIT

Learning of a complex but ubiquitous form like the conditional cannot stop with the unit test, of course. The instructor should revisit the material throughout the term, using different genres and formats, such as a short reading in academic English, which almost always will have contextualized uses of the conditional. Even music can be used, such as a clip from “Fiddler on the Roof,” with the main character Tevye singing “If I Were a Rich Man,” a clear example of the unreal conditional. Even more common, everyday uses of the form, such as giving advice or a warning “If I were you, I would--” or “I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” can be used almost impromptu as opportunity arises.

ACQUISITION OF A SECOND LANGUAGE, PARTICULARLY ITS MORE COMPLEX FORMS, DOES NOT STOP AT ONE EXPOSURE, OR EVEN STUDY OF ONE UNIT, TO THE FORM. Rather, opportunities must be created by the instructor to continually repeat, reuse, reformulate, and review the material.

4 Amazing Ideas for AccuracyFluency Balance ALL OF US GIVE PLENTY OF THOUGHT TO WHAT WE DO AND HOW WE DO THINGS IN OUR ESL CLASSROOM.

We carefully plan things like, content, techniques and even what material to use in each lesson. However, where activities are concerned many teachers suddenly become plagued with uncertainty regarding fluency and accuracy. Which of them has more priority? Should we always balance them out equally or is one more important than the other in an ESL lesson? It does seem tricky, after all if the activities are to fluency-based you run the risk of having your students disregard the proper use of structures, for instance. On the other hand, if the activities are too accuracy-based they might become to obsessed with precision and might need too much time to communicate. As with everything in life, neither one extreme is better than the other. It is all about the balance, but the good news is, there are ways to tell when fluency should preside over accuracy and vice versa. Take a look at these useful tips.

USE THESE IDEAS FOR ACCURACY- FLUENCY BALANCE

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CONSIDER YOUR STUDENTS’ AGE

Teaching kids is not the same as teaching adults. So, as we all know, the techniques, material, activities, etc all need to be age appropriate. Regarding fluency and accuracy, many ESL teachers that have young learners believe that over correcting and focusing too much on accuracy does not encourage children to learn to communicate. Instead they become prone to limited language use in order to have better control over their responses. Kids need to feel relaxed about language learning and using games where they can build on fluency will help them feel they are capable of more. This does not mean mistakes should be ignored, but that they may need to be addressed individually perhaps later on while the other students

are working on an assignment. Also, when accuracy-based learning does take place, always try to use activities that are engaging so that kids ease into them. In the case of adults, many of the same considerations apply, however since adults understand the role accuracybased learning plays, what we should consider the most is the students’ levels, needs and what the lesson goal is at that point.

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CONSIDER YOUR STUDENTS’ LEVEL

At different levels students have different goals. Naturally, beginners will have fewer, more limited fluencybased activities than students in higher levels. They are learning to communicate. The more students know and are able to use, the more their performance will enable them to become increasingly fluent. We need to keep in mind that when students communicate fluently, it means that they are comfortable using the language and can be understood by others. This does mean that there are no mistakes in their communication, but that those mistakes do not affect what they are trying to get across. Accuracy is also present in higher levels though many teachers tend to place a bit more emphasis on fluency. The reason for this is that accuracy refers to the correctness of the language being produced. If students focus too much on accuracy, it doesn’t mean they will be capable of producing effective communication.

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tion phase is when our students need to be more accurate. At this point the teacher focuses on what is correct or incorrect and ensures her students can understand and are ready to begin to use what they have learned. As we move into the practice and student initiative phases, students are granted more control over what and how they say things. It is at this point fluency becomes more necessary.

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SPECIFIC STUDENT NEEDS

Age and level aside, students sometimes have very different needs. This is why most of us often ask our students why they are learning English. Their specific needs are very important when making important decisions about the lesson. In most cases, adult students need to learn to communicate. Communicative competency refers to the ability of a speaker to communicate effectively in the language. This ability is based on more than just grammatical knowledge, the objective is for students to be able to communicate effectively, not to emphasize on the precise use of the language.

REMEMBER, ALWAYS STAY AWAY FROM EXTREMES, BALANCE IS WHAT SHOULD ALWAYS PREVAIL. Do keep in mind though, leaning one way or another is sometimes necessary depending on your students.

WHAT PART OF THE LESSON IT IS

For most teachers, each lesson is divided into parts or stages depending on how it was planned out. We usually begin by introducing something new, like vocabulary, structures or even expressions. After that, our students move on to practice what they have learned. Different parts of the lesson have different needs in terms of fluency and accuracy. The introduc-

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Get Them Talking Outside of Class: 3 Speaking & Listening Challenges EVERY ESL TEACHER WORKING IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY EVENTUALLY REALIZES THAT ONE OF THE GREATEST OBSTACLES FACING THEIR STUDENTS IS A LACK OF OPPORTUNITIES TO SPEAK ENGLISH.

Often students’ reading and writing skills far outstrip their speaking and listening skills simply because they are exposed to more reading and writing than listening and speaking. There is no reason for students to speak English other than within the confines of the English classroom. This does not mean there are not opportunities outside the classroom, they are just not part of the students’ everyday life and the students have no reason to seek them out. So how can you, the teacher, make students want to seek out opportunities for speaking English outside of class? Well, you have to make it worth their while. One great way of doing that is through challenges that must be completed outside of class. In this way, teachers can create or force students to capitalise on English speaking opportunities. Of course these mean very little if there is not a reward system in place. I have tried tying this to my classroom reward system, and I’ve tried having a separate reward system just for the challenges. My conclusion: it completely depends on the class and how the existing reward system is structured. I know of one teacher who set bars such as ‘complete five challenges and get a bonus point on your test.’ Obviously, few teachers will have the ability to start handing out bonus points for government testing, but I think you get the picture. So here are three challenge ideas for you to consider.

CHALLENGE YOUR STUDENTS TO SPEAK AND LISTEN MORE

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COLLECT INFORMATION

This task only really works if you have several different English speakers that you can call on to assist. Ideally, it would be a mix of teachers at your school and local business people, but if it is only teachers at your school that is fine. For

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teachers who are on good terms with their colleagues who do not speak English, it may be possible to have them participate by teaching them the two phrases that they need to know to respond to student queries. In this model there is room for an entire series of challenges. Everything from asking each person’s favourite colour, to what they like to eat, to getting the details about where they went last summer or why they started their business, etc. can be used as the basis for the challenge, as long as it is asked in English. That’s all there is to this challenge. They just have to find the people, ask questions, listen, and write down the answers. Challenges like these are great early on or good to put up in the weeks before exams when students are especially busy.

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SCAVENGER HUNT

This is a more complicated version of the collect information challenge. You still need participation from other people who are willing to speak English in the school and, if possible, in the community. It also takes more preparation on your part. Teachers create a set of clues that take students around the school or neighborhood to a final destination. Remember that there will be a limited amount of time for students to actually spend travelling between destinations. I tend to make the clues in the form of a riddle so that they have to put some careful thought into where to go next. Given that this scavenger hunt is something that takes place out of class, it’s probably best to keep the entire hunt to three or four clues. How these actually work will depend in a large part on your own neighbourhood and how good of terms you are on with the local businesses. In my case, my area has a café owner who is very friendly and speaks English. I am a regular customer and he has assisted me with various projects involving my students.

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QUESTIONS ABOUT AN ENGLISH TV PROGRAM

Wide availability of online English TV programming provides an excellent opportunity for teachers to direct their students towards more English exposure. Unfortunately, this type of activity is only a listening activity, but it can be done by any student with a good internet connection. Teachers must carefully select age appropriate shows that can be accessed in their country of residence. Korea, for example, has quite rigid rules about accessible internet content. Once solid content has been found, the teacher can create several types of questions/ challenges around it. One option is to provide dialogue gap-fill exercises for specific portions of the show. This is best for low level students as it requires only listening for single words at specific intervals. Another is to ask the students specific questions about an episode. (ie. Why does [character] get angry at [character]?) This is a mid to high-level activity. It will only work if your students are capable of following and understanding conversations at native-speaker-speed. A third option is to have students draft up a summary of the episode. Be very clear in your requirements for this. Do you require a character list? A general plot summary? Specifics about relationships between characters? Make sure the students know exactly what you want. Finally, make sure that you have watched the episode yourself. If you are going to evaluate their work, make sure you can do so accurately. Also, it’s a great excuse to watch a little TV. After all you’re working, right? Alternative: If the students do not have access to consistent internet, the teacher can lend out copies of various TV shows in the appropriate media format. This of course means the teacher needs to create a decent library of these types of files.

A FEW NOTES ON DELIVERY There are many ways to put these chal-

lenges in front of the students. I started a blog (there are plenty of free blog sites) and posted a new challenge there each week. This kept the process completely out of regular class time. This worked for me as I only had each class once a week and posting it on a blog meant that all classes had the same amount of time to complete the task, regardless of when I actually taught those students. The downside to this was that only the advanced, enthusiastic students really got involved until the end of the term when kids were desperate to up their scores. Other options include, presenting the challenge every Monday morning. If you don’t teach all your students on Monday, you could have the school broadcast the challenge. The problem with this is that if students miss the broadcast, or don’t take notes on some of the more complex challenges, they won’t be able to complete them.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT THESE THINGS ONLY WORK IF THE TEACHER KEEPS PUSHING THEM IN CLASS AND KEEPS THE CHALLENGES IN THE FOREFRONT OF THE STUDENTS’ MINDS.

When I had tied my class attitude marks to my classroom reward system, I would display the students’ scores and then say things like, ‘for those of you who are struggling a bit, now might be the time to get into those classroom challenges.’ Usually, this would push a few of them into greater participation.

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How to Use a Class Party to Teach 10 Social Conversation Skills ARE YOU TIRED OF YOUR TYPICAL SOCIAL CONVERSATION ROLE PLAYING EXERCISES? ESL teachers know that possibly the most important skill for learners is social mixing and mingling conversation, but role playing in partners or repetitions often lack real life context and go stale after a while. Give your ESL students an opportunity to practice one-on-one conversation with natives or advanced speakers and liven up your class with a real party!

PUT TOGETHER A REAL PARTY Invite good natured English speakers to class, to an afternoon cocktail party, a light lunch, or whatever other party is culturally appropriate. You want to have, at minimum, a ratio of one native or advanced speaker to two students if possible. Do whatever is within your means and budget! If you are in a foreign country with few speakers, invite an advanced class to come, or other teachers.

SOCIAL SKILLS LESSON Before the party, teach the following 10 basic social skills to students and have them practice on each other. Give them a debriefing checklist with the skills before the party telling them that they are responsible to record both the responses of the natives as well as note their body language and other conversational cues. Give a certain number of points for completing each task, and award the student with the most points a prize. Save time also at the end of the party or the next class to have a gossip session about the results!

HOW TO TEACH 10 IMPORTANT SOCIAL SKILLS

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THE GREETING

Your students probably already know greetings and the difference between formal and informal salutations. They might not have ever had a chance to practice using them in a real social setting, however. Tell them to see how

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many different “hellos” and “I am well” responses they can fit into their conversations! Award a point for each different one used.

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WHAT DO YOU DO?

Ask students to practice eliciting vocation information in a social conversation context. They can ask “What do you do?” and “Where do you work?” Give them a point for each answer they receive.

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HERITAGE

Have students practice asking if people are from around your community or from where their family originated. For each answer they receive, give them a point. They can ask, “Where are you from originally?” or “Do you live around here?”

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WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO DO?

It can be trickier getting personal with strangers! Brief them that to ask these questions about hobbies and pastimes, they might have to wait until some information is offered from another question. For example, if they had asked “What do you do?” and received an answer like “I am a waiter but I really love to write novels”, they can use that as a cue to ask about a writing hobby. Practice this skill before the party by preparing a list of short dialogues for pairs to take turns dialoguing in front of the class. Give two sentences like above and then demonstrate that they should respond something like “Oh, so you write in your free time?” Give two points for each hobby solicited as this is more challenging!

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FAMILY

Students should wait for cues to ask about family in most cases as well. You can design another practice dialogue like in number four or teach to ask general questions, like “Do you have family in the area?” Give two points for each specific data point they can figure out via open ended questions.

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CONNECTIONS

Have them try to figure out how people are connected to the group. This is an important social skill and a good conversation starter. They should ask, “How did you get involved in this party?” This is a great way to solicit work, hobby, and heritage information as well! Give two points if students can figure out how your native speakers ended up at the party. If you invited an advanced group, have them try to discover why they are studying English.

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BODY LANGUAGE

Give a point for each body language note students deliver. For examples, they should focus on 1) if people look them in the eye when they speak and 2) if people laugh or smile during the conversation.

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GIVE BACK

Give students a point for each appropriate response they give to elicited personal information. For example, if they manage to discover where a native’s family is from, they should respond with where they are from! Giving back is critical to dialogue.

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MANNERS

Teach the art of polite interjections, such as “I see”, “how interesting”, and “that sounds amazing”. For each proper use, give a point.

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WHEN TO QUIT

Teach students to look for cues of when a mingling conversation should end. Cues can be “My drink is empty”, “I need to go to the bathroom”, or body language hints like they begin looking away. For every proper cue noted and responded to by walking away, give a point.

SOCIAL CONVERSATION SKILLS MIGHT BE THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING FOR ESL STUDENTS. When practicing in class has become boring or just does not seem like enough, take experiential to the next level and bring the party to your students!

Help Your Students Know When to Be Formal with These Useful Tips THERE IS A LOT ABOUT SOCIAL INTERACTIONS THAT CAN MAKE QUITE A FEW OF US ANXIOUS.

Moreover, when those interactions are with people from other countries. Now put yourself in your students’ shoes. They constantly need to interact with people, mostly from other countries. And believe me, they have a lot on their minds. Our poor ESL students are plagued with worries. They are often scared about asking certain questions or bringing up certain topics. Regarding social interactions, there is one that really gets our ESL students worked up: formality. When to use formal language and when not to is one of the many issues our students have to deal with. Well, the good news is there is plenty we can do to help our beloved students in this area too. Take a look at the awesome tips below and put your students’ minds at ease.

HELP YOUR STUDENTS WITH THE FORMAL LANGUAGE

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Typically in formal language we don’t use contractions, whereas we do with informal English. I would not like to vs I don’t want to

WHEN SHOULD IT BE USED?

Now that we know what it is, we should consider when it is appropriate to use formal English. So, in essence formal English is a way of speaking that you usually use when you are not well acquainted with the people you are talking to. Since you are unfamiliar to them , it is a great way to show respect and keep a distance. Distance is also important when talking to people who are higher in status or in the case of business, people who are in higher positions. Take a look at the following examples. •

In academic environments, when writing essays for a class and when addressing teachers/professors.

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At work, when writing an email to people you don’t personally know.

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Also at work when speaking to a customer/ supplier who is new or who you personally have never worked with.

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Traditionally when speaking to someone who is significantly older than you, people have always used formal language to communicate merely because it is a sign of respect.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?

To start, the first thing we need to ask ourselves is what formal English is and how it is different from informal English. •

longer more complex structures.

you accept them. In few cases, however, being excessively formal when it is not necessary can bring about the opposite effect. People might misinterpret the distance in formality as some kind of rejection. Even business related situations sometimes call for and depend on informal interactions. When in doubt, pay close attention to others and how they communicate in these situations.

FOR ESL STUDENTS NOT EVERYTHING IS EVIDENT REGARDING SOCIAL RULES. They have to understand that formality should be used only when it is necessary. They need to be able to tell when it is advisable and when it isn’t. Help your ESL students demonstrate to others how they can go the extra mile. Help them show others they are capable of adapting and that they can handle anything.

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WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO USE FORMAL ENGLISH IN • When we use formal English, we THESE SITUATIONS use fewer phrasal verbs and more vocabulary derived from French and Latin. Generally, we use words that are considered more sophisticated. •

Indirect language is also much more common in formal English. Using the passive, for instance, makes everything less personal.

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The use of synonyms in order to avoid repeating the same vocabulary is another classic example.

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Sentences are better organized and thought out, and they tend to have

Now, to finish off our last point, here are some interesting questions I’d like to share with you. Why is using formal language so important?.What might happen if you don’t use it? Could you be shunned from society or something like that? The answer to the last question is no of course, at least not most of the time. Formality is important because it shows that you can communicate in a professional manner, that you have respect for others and that you are willing to demonstrate that when communicating with them. It shows that you feel comfortable with social rules and that

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10 Essential English Skills Your Students Need for College ESL STUDENTS STUDY ENGLISH FOR A PURPOSE, AND FOR MANY THAT PURPOSE IS HIGHER EDUCATION.

Men and women, young and old travel great distances to attend colleges and universities. Many of them, though, must improve their English skills before they are accepted to the programs they desire. To make sure your ESL students are ready for class before enrollment day, check this list of English skills your students will need in college.

READING

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READING TEXT BOOKS

One key to a successful college education is reading the texts that the professor assigns. This element can be even more important for ESL students than typical students since what they do not understand in lectures they will usually find in their texts. Your students will need to know how to read technical material and decipher unfamiliar vocabulary from context. Teach your students to notice clues to understanding important parts of the textbook like subheadings, bolded and italicized words and chapter summaries.

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READING SCHEDULING MATERIALS

Before they can buy the right textbooks, though, they will need to know what classes they are taking. Reading is more than just prose on a page. ESL students will have to understand class scheduling and degree requirement information as it is written for the student body. Taking the right classes at the right time is key to graduating on time, so be sure your students are familiar with reading charts and graphs in addition to prose selection.

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READING ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION

In today’s world, face to face communication is a rarity. More often students and teachers communicate through

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email or text messages. Often, these written communications do not follow traditional grammatical rules, and your students will have to be flexible enough to understand loose grammar and cryptic abbreviations. Try looking at real life examples in class on a regular basis to give your students some foundation in the texting world.

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READING FOR ONLINE COURSES

Online courses may keep students out of the classroom, but they require even more reading than traditional classes. Your students will need to read online course material as well as students’ responses in almost every remote class they take. Make sure your students understand that even native speaker grammar is not always right, and challenge them to understand the meaning behind less than perfect syntactic structures.

WRITING

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PAPERS AND ESSAYS

Essays are prolific among college courses. Of course, the area of study in which the class falls will influence how many essays the professor expects as well as how long those papers will need to be. Make sure your students understand basic essay structure – introduction, body, conclusion – and know how to use different organizational strategies to articulate their thoughts on paper.

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ESSAY BASED EXAMS

Oh, the dreaded essay exam. Not only does the student have to have strong grammatical skills, he has to put down the correct ideas and all in the time frame of a typical class. Giving your students plenty of opportunities for timed writings on challenging subjects will give them the mental and linguistic preparation they will need for essay tests. Learning the content is up to them.

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WRITTEN REACTIONS TO WORK OF FELLOW STUDENTS Along with reading online material for remote classes, your students will be required to comment on postings from their fellow students. Make sure your students know how to type on a standard keyboard and can communicate their ideas without being too brash or too coddling. Finding the fine line to walk the truth and cordiality is the real skill with posting reactions to students’ work.

LISTENING

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LISTENING AND UNDERSTANDING LECTURES

Of course, your students will have to sit in lecture halls with hundreds of other students, particularly in their first years of classes. Give your students lots of opportunity to practice by inviting guest speakers to your classroom and then checking your students’ comprehension. Encourage them to ask questions of each speaker and give you feedback based on the lecture.

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UNDERSTANDING FELLOW STUDENTS

Study groups are helpful means of learning difficult material, so you will want your students to feel comfortable having a conversation with a typical native speaker. Conversation partners, guest speakers and real world listening and speaking practice will all help your students know what it is really like to talk to a native English speaker.

SPEAKING

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ASKING WHEN THEY NEED HELP

Though technically a language skill, asking a professor or fellow student for help takes more than skill of the

tongue. Pride can keep some students from asking for help even when they are studying in their native language. Other students keep their mouths closed when they are confused because they are too embarrassed to admit that they need help. Before your students leave your ESL program to attend classes in English, make sure they know their professors are there to help. Every college educator will assist their students and help them succeed. Your students need to feel confident that they can approach their professors for help when they need it.

IF YOU MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR PAST STUDENTS, THEY CAN TELL YOU DIRECTLY HOW THEY WERE BEST (AND WORST) PREPARED FOR THE COLLEGE SCENE BY THEIR ENGLISH CLASSES. When they give feedback, listening will be of the greatest benefit for both you and them, so be open to their feedback.

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5 Nifty Tips on How to Help Student Handle Awkward Situations LIFE IS FULL OF AWKWARD SITUATIONS, AND HANDLING THEM IS NOT ALWAYS EASY.

However, managing them in a different language is much harder still. What should you do in this type of situation? When other people are involved, is it a good idea to say something? Is there a good time to do so? What if it is you who has caused the awkwardness? I guess we all ask ourselves these questions but when the people involved are from other countries, the discomfort can only rise. There are many different kinds of awkward situations and fortunately there are great techniques to handle them. Let’s take a look at some of these uncomfortable scenarios.

DEAL WITH AWKWARD SITUATIONS USING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

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AVOIDING PERSONAL QUESTIONS

Nosy people are everywhere. Some are simply unaware their questions are too personal or private. Others do it intentionally to get the dirt on others. Whether they are innocent or like to gossip, the technique you should teach your student is the same. Let them know they can answer questions without actually answering them. This is great because they can manage the situation comfortably without being too direct about how they really feel. Take a look at the example Student 1: So, how much do you make? Student 2: Not as much as I’d like but I guess can’t complain. Student 1: Why did you get divorced? Student 2: Well, let’s just say my ex husband and I didn’t have a lot in common.

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I FORGOT YOUR NAME

Remembering people’s names is extremely important if you want to build strong relationships in life. We all know

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strong relationships are one of the most important factors for success. But, who hasn’t forgotten someone’s name at some point. This is a very common situation and it is much more uncomfortable for those who forget than for those whose name was forgotten. In the business world, this can become even more complicated. In any of these cases, what we have to keep in mind as ESL teachers is that there are different techniques we can teach our students to help them get through this. This first option is quite direct. It is simply a an extraordinarily polite way to ask someone to repeat their name. Take a look at an example. • Excuse me, I know we’ve met , could you tell me your name again?

are going to practice with your students. Let’s take a look at some handy expressions to handle this.

What I meant was.... What I was trying to say was... That wasn’t what I wanted to say. Let me try that again.

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YOU DIDN’T UNDERSTAND

In different social encounters there is yet another difficult situation many people face, specially those who don’t speak the language. For ESL students, not understanding what others are saying is truly very common. Again, by teaching your ESL students these useful expressions you can give them great tools to cope with comprehension issues.

This second option is a bit different. • Hello, you are Jill from the accounting department, right? • Hi, actually I’m Jane from the accounting department. • Did I say Jill? I meant to say Jane.

I’m sorry would you mind saying that again? Would you mind repeating that? Excuse me, could you please say that again? Excuse me, I didn’t catch that.

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REMEMBER TO TELL YOUR STUDENTS THAT IN ANY AWKWARD SITUATION THE OBJECTIVE IS TO MANAGE AND CONTROL THE SITUATION AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.

CHANGING THE SUBJECT

There are topics we all want to avoid. Either because the timing isn’t right or because you think it is downright inappropriate. Sometimes it is simply a good idea to change the subject. As ESL teachers we need to provide our students with useful language functions to suit different situations. Let’s take a look at a few.

I’d rather not talk about that. I don’t thinks this is a good time to discuss that. If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about that now.

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CLARIFYING WHAT YOU MEANT

Sometimes what we what to express doesn’t quite come out the way we intended it to. We say the wrong thing or express something in a way that is misleading and right after that comes the uncomfortable silence. The good news is that it is possible to make things right again, and that it is exactly what you

Practice different scenarios with them and make sure they are ready because social interactions tend to be very unpredictable.

Teach Your ESL Students How to Manage Difficult Situations WHO HASN’T BEEN IN A TOUGH SPOT AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER? I know I have. Sadly getting into a mess is rather easy, but getting out of one, not so much. Now let’s consider our ESL students. Many of them will need to travel abroad, and whether it is for pleasure, business or study, being able to interact with others is a requirement. Even if they don’t travel, they might also have to interact with foreign visitors and, because of that, they have to be ready to face all kinds of situations. Don’t let them go through these situations helpless. Prepare them by talking about these possibilities and practice with them. In difficult circumstances, they first need to understand what went wrong and then find a way to make it better. Let’s take a look at the following scenarios and what you can teach your students. Keep in mind they can use these expressions themselves or understand them if they are used by others.

PROVIDE LEARNERS WITH AN EFFECTIVE WAY OUT OF A TOUGH SITUATION

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AWKWARD OR INAPPROPRIATE CONVERSATION TOPICS There are topics that can be awkward or even inappropriate. There are things that should not be discussed at certain times or around certain people. Some topics could offend others and cause problems. The best solution to this is to avoid or change the subject when it comes up. Take a look:

I’m uncomfortable talking about this. Could we talk about something else? This is making me uncomfortable, could we change the subject? I don’t think this is the time to discuss this.

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WHEN SOMEONE WAS OFFENDED

Sometime we laugh at the wrong time or use the wrong words. In any case, offending someone without intention to do so is very common. So what do we do about it? These phrases can help:

I think I may have offended you. I didn’t mean to do it. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to offend you. That isn’t what I meant to express, and I believe I may have hurt your feelings. What I wanted to say was.... There seems to be a misunderstanding what I meant was ...

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WHEN A MISTAKE HAS BEEN MADE

We all make mistakes and as the saying goes, “to err is human, to forgive, divine”. So why not give someone the opportunity to be divine. Teach your student to apologize for mistakes they have made. Look at the following:

I’m terribly sorry about any inconvenience I may have caused. Please accept my apologies. I’m very sorry about that.

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WHEN IT ISN’T A GOOD TIME TO DISCUSS SOMETHING Sometimes the problem is just poor timing. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can happen to anyone. In this case what your students need to learn is that the best way to handle this is by cutting the conversation short.

Let’s talk later. Let’s continue this conversation tomorrow. Look at the time! I have got to run. Let’s talk later. Why don’t we discuss this tomorrow at lunch?

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DISAGREEING

People don’t always see eye to eye. We often disagree with each other and that’s fine. Your students should see that expressing a different opinion is perfectly fine as long as they do this with respect.

I’m sorry I simply don’t agree with you on that. I understand but I disagree I have some reservations about that.

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ASKING SOMEONE NOT TO DO SOMETHING

There are times we need to tell people what we want them to do and also what we don’t want them to do. Asking people to do things seem easier than asking them not to do things. Again, it is all a matter of showing respect and consideration.

Would you mind not discussing that at the meeting? Could you please avoid mentioning that problem?

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AVOIDING COMMITMENT

Some people ask for too many favors. For many it is awkward to say no to favors, but it shouldn’t be. There are times we can take on new commitments and times we can’t.

You’d better ask someone else to do that. I’m not sure I’ll be able to. I really can’t make any promises. I have so much on my hands already. I don’t think I can handle that right now. Why don’t you ask someone else? DON’T LET UNCOMFORTABLE SITUATIONS PARALYZE YOUR STUDENTS. With a bit a of practice, they will get the hang of it.

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10 Learning Centers Perfect for Listening and Speaking Class ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A WAY TO INCORPORATE LISTENING AND SPEAKING LEARNING CENTERS INTO YOUR ESL CLASSROOM? Try one of the following with your class and give students some ownership in their own language learning process.

APPLY THESE 10 IDEAS FOR LISTENING AND SPEAKING CENTERS

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READING RECORDING

If you have the resources (tape player/recorder or some digital recording method) you won’t need much more to set up a reading and recording center for students to evaluate and practice correct pronunciation. Simply set out the recording device along with several copies of a short reading passage. The reading passage should be something your students can read in two to five minutes and that includes a variety of pronunciation challenges. Students using the center read the passage into the recording device and then play it back to check their own pronunciation. As they listen, they should mark on the reading passage any problems they note in their own pronunciation. You can also leave a recording of yourself at the center for students to use as a model or reference.

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PHONOLOGY FOR YOU AND ME

If you have taught the phonological alphabet to your ESL students, this center might be right for your class. Since the phonological alphabet focuses on pronunciation and sound, unusual spellings won’t throw your students off, even on unfamiliar words. This simple set up learning center gives students sets of vocabulary words written in the phonological alphabet. They read the words aloud and then match each word to its definition, which you can list on a separate piece of paper or write on index cards. Students will get practice with accurate pronunciation while they also review

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vocabulary and won’t get tripped up by reading difficulties.

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INTERVIEW FOR ME AND YOU

This learning center is designed for two students at a time. At the center, simply provide a list of interview questions for students to ask their classmates. Students using the center will interview each other using these questions or others like them. Students should take turns asking and answering questions while they try to learn new things about someone they see every day.

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LISTEN AND LEARN

If you want your students to practice listening and identifying what they hear, you can set up a dictation center. Give your students several choices of listening selections (passages you have recorded yourself, listening resources like cds or other teaching materials you won’t be using in class, online videos or audio selections, podcasts, etc.). When using the center, students should listen to the material, stopping the recording as necessary, and write down what they hear word for word. This will require careful listening along with speed and accuracy. You should also provide a transcript for each recording so your students can check their accuracy once they have completed writing the passage.

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LISTENING FOR DETAIL

Can your students pick out important information when they listen to English, information such as dates, names and other specifics? On a classroom computer, bookmark or download some short informational passages. How to videos on YouTube are great resources for this type of listening. For each video, list five or so informational questions on an index card that the video answers. As a student listens to the passage, he notes the answers to the questions on a

separate piece of paper. At this learning center, make sure you also have answer keys so students can check their own answers.

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HOW DOES THAT SONG GO?

This learning center challenges students to listen for specific vocabulary as they listen to a popular song. Choose some of your favorite tunes or those you think your students will like that also have easily discernable lyrics. For each song, print out a copy of the lyrics with key words replaced by blanks (like a modified cloze exercise). As your students listen to each song, they should fill in the missing words as they hear them. As always, provide answer sheets for each song at the learning station so students can check their own work after they listen.

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LISTEN AND WATCH

The British Council provides free listening activities on their website for ESL students. Videos range from beginner level to advanced and come with activities your students can do as they listen. Simply direct your students to the website on a classroom computer or on your students’ smart devices. All they have to do is choose a video and an exercise to go with it. Note the segments on this website are in British English, so they might not be the best choice for those learning and teaching American English.

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FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS

If your students like working with their hands or exercising their art skills, this center will fulfill their learning style like no other. Your students will be following your directions for constructing an object with building blocks or drawing picture. If you choose to use Lego building blocks, record yourself as you talk through building a simple item. It might be a house, a letter of the alphabet, or any other simple design. Make sure your recording speci-

fies colors and sizes of the blocks. At the center, make the Legos and the recordings available to your students. As they listen they should follow your directions and, hopefully, build the same object that you did. Similarly, if you want students to draw rather than build at this station, record yourself giving directions for drawing a simple picture without telling students what they are drawing. Include a reference photo at the center so your students can check their work. Once students have listened to a passage and drawn a picture or built something, they should check the reference picture to see how close they got to replicating your design.

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OLD BOOKS TO NEW USE

Do you have listening books and materials from a previous class that you aren’t using this year? I know I have several on my bookshelf. These materials can have a second life in a learning center for your students. Simply put out the book and the audio that goes with it and let your students learn at their own pace.

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ONLINE LISTENING

Lots of ESL websites have listening activities your students can do on their own. Bookmark a few of your favorites on a classroom computer and let students go to it.

LEARNING CENTERS ARE GREAT FOR HELPING STUDENTS BECOME INDEPENDENT, MOTIVATED LEARNERS. THESE ARE JUST SOME OF THE WAYS YOU CAN INCORPORATE THEM INTO YOUR LISTENING AND SPEAKING ESL CLASS.

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6 Most Popular Teaching Methods, & Which One You Should Be Using PEOPLE HAVE BEEN LEARNING SECOND LANGUAGES FOR AGES.

English hasn’t always been the popular choice. Once upon a time those who were considered “cultured” learned Latin and/or Greek. Soon after French was the popular choice where second languages were concerned. English as a second language gained importance not so long ago, in the mid nineteenth century. Before the late nineteenth century, second-language instruction followed what was called a Classical Method of teaching. Latin and Greek lessons were based on repetition drills and students were asked to read translations of ancient texts. Since the 1940s, communicative skills gradually became more and more important to those who wanted or needed to study other languages and that’s when many of the different Theories of second-language acquisition began to appear.

FIND YOUR TEACHING METHOD

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THE DIRECT METHOD

Teachers have been using the Direct Method for years. The benefit of using this method is to immerse the students in English. This is done by providing demonstrations on how to use the language with the the help of realia and visual aids. The teachers who use this method teach grammar inductively, in other words, the rules of grammar are not taught directly. Grammar rules are avoided as much as possible and there is emphasis on good pronunciation. Teaching with this method is performed entirely in the target language and students are discouraged from using their native language.

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AUDIO-LINGUAL

This method became very popular in the 1960s and was based on the behaviorist theory of learning. It held that language learning is a kind of behavior, similar to other types of human activity. According to the behaviorist theory, teachers elicit responses through stimuli. The response is reinforced by

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the teacher and if this reinforcement is positive, it encourages the repetition of the response in the future. In essence, it relies on the idea that learning a language is like acquiring habits. For audiolinguism, language learning requires students to master the building blocks of the language and learn the rules they need to know to successfully combine these basic elements. Typically, there is a great deal of practice through dialogs and conversations. New language is first heard and extensively drilled before being seen in its written form. Dialogs and drills are central to the approach. Accurate pronunciation and control of structure are of paramount importance.

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TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE (TPR)

TPR or Total Physical Response, developed by James Asher in the 1960s, is based on the theory that the memory is enhanced through association with physical movement. It is also closely associated with theories of mother language acquisition in very young children, where they respond physically to parental commands. TPR as an approach to teaching a second language is based, first and foremost, on listening and this is linked to physical actions which are designed to reinforce comprehension of particular basic items.

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COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT)

Our knowledge of second language learning has changed a lot. Before, language learning was based on how well students knew and could manage grammar and the learning was under the teachers’ control. Views on language learning have changed a great deal in recent years. It is now seen as interactions of the learner and those who use the language. Language is used to create purposeful and meaningful interactions. Also, learners are able to experiment with different ways to say something. The focus of communicative language learning is to enable learners to communicate effectively and appropriately in the various situations they

would likely find themselves in.

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TASK-BASED LANGUAGE LEARNING

In Task-based learning the main focus of the teaching is on completing a task. The task in itself is interesting to the learners and they need to use the language they already have to complete it. More attention is placed on the use of the language and not much on accuracy. Language is the instrument the students use to complete the task . It is an activity in which students use language to achieve a specific outcome. The activity reflects real life and learners focus on meaning, they are free to use any language they want. Some great examples of tasks are playing games, finding information and even solving problems. By using them, students will generate their own language and create an opportunity for language acquisition

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THE NATURAL APPROACH

It is a language teaching approach which claims that languages are learned the same way people naturally acquire their native language. It focuses on the similarities between learning the first and second languages and adheres to the communicative approach to teaching. In this approach, students learn by being exposed to language that is comprehensible or made comprehensible to them.In this approach communication is considered the primary function of language therefore it focuses on teaching communicative abilities. In other words, language is viewed as a vehicle for communicating meaning and messages and vocabulary is very important to achieve this. So, this means that language acquisition takes place when the learner understands messages in the target language and has developed sufficient vocabulary. In fact it, according to the Natural approach, should be easier to reconstruct a message containing just vocabulary items than one containing just the grammatical structures.

SECOND-LANGUAGE TEACHING HAS DEFINITELY COME A LONG WAY AND CONSIDERING HOW MUCH WE KNOW NOW, IT HAS A LONG WAY TO GO STILL. It is hard to say which method or approach is the best. Different students and needs may require you use more than just one, even at a time. The trend has been toward combining different methods and approaches, and this is probably the healthiest approach for it accommodates many styles of learning. Also, it allows teachers to decide which elements are most effective and which of them really work in the classroom. If you combine methods, you take the best that each has to offer, after all, teaching languages is not easy. In the end, its all about providing our students with the tools they need to function in the target language.

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No Prep, Little Prep, & More Prep Ways to Get Them Ready to Learn HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO JUMP RIGHT INTO A SEQUEL LONG AFTER READING THE FIRST BOOK OR SEEING THE FIRST MOVIE?

It takes some time to get your bearings, doesn’t it? To really get the most out of book two, I find it helpful to read book one again to refamiliarize myself with what has happened. ESL students learning something new in class have a similar predicament. They may be okay jumping right into a new topic or material, but it will take some time to get adjusted and get their bearings. A simple “review” activity before moving on to new material can make a huge difference in how well they absorb the new information you are presenting. In teaching terms, you may know this process as activating the schemata, helping students remember what they already know about a topic or making connections with personal experiences before introducing to new material. That’s because learners retain new material through connections with what they already know. Simply helping them remember what they already know will get them ready to quickly and easily make connections to the new information you present. Getting your students ready to learn is therefore extremely important, and it’s an essential part of your job as an ESL teacher. You can do many things to help your students remember what they already know before moving on to a new collection of information. Here are some of the ways you can do it.

USE THESE NO PREP WAYS TO ACTIVATE SCHEMATA

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ASK QUESTIONS

The easiest way to help students remember experiences with a certain topic is to ask them questions about it. Say you are doing a unit on sports. Ask students questions like these: What sports do you like to play? What sports do you like to watch? How many sports can you name? What can you tell me about rules of certain sports? Did you

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ever do something great while playing a sport? How did you feel? What did you do? Just asking simple questions like these will get students thinking and remembering and will lay the foundation for the new information you give them.

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HAVE SMALL GROUP DISCUSSIONS

Dividing your class into groups and telling them to talk about the topic at hand may be enough to get the conversation moving. The thoughts and memories some students share will bring up memories for other students, which they should share in turn. That’s why it’s also a good, no prep strategy for getting students ready to learn. If your students need more prompting than just the general topic, give them a few questions to get the discussion started.

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BRAINSTORM

Making a simple list related to your topic is an easy and quick way to remind your students what they already know. You might want to brainstorm a list of vocabulary, experiences, or something else related to what you will be teaching your students. It doesn’t take any preparation on your part, but your students will still reap the benefits.

CONSIDER LITTLE PREP WAYS TO ACTIVATE SCHEMATA

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BRING IN A COLLECTION OF PICTURES

If you teach the same subjects year after year, it will be worth your time to start a collection of pictures related to each unit. Collecting pictures from magazines, your personal experiences, and online resources will give you something to share with your students before you introduce new material. Show one or more pictures to your students and ask them what they see, how the pictures make them feel, and what the pictures make them remember.

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HAVE STUDENTS BRING IN THEIR OWN PICTURES

Either after showing your pictures or instead of it, invite students to bring in their own pictures related to an upcoming unit (just make sure to plan ahead so you have the pictures when you are ready to introduce the new material). Ask students to share some information about the picture, where they were, how it felt, and what they remember. Give everyone a chance to share either in front of the class or in small groups, and your students will be ready to absorb new information related to the topic.

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DO A K/W/L CHART

K/W/L charts are a great way to help students get ready to learn. You can have students do them individually on a piece of paper or do one as an entire class on the board. If you have never done a K/W/L chart before, it’s very easy. Divide your board into three columns. In the first column, write what you already know about a topic. If you are doing the chart as a class, you can include everyone’s information in the same column. In the second column, make a list of what you want to know about the same topic. Likely, this column will be filled with questions from your students. (Bonus point: it’s a good time to talk about how to properly structure questions.) The final column contains what you learned after getting the information, so save that one until you share the new information with your students. You can also use this third column to assess how much they understood and remembered from what you taught if you have students complete it individually.

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FILL IN A GRAPHIC ORGANIZER

Either as a class or in smaller discussion groups, filling in a graphic organizer can be all your students need to remember what they already know. These organizers might be as simple as a few titled columns or as complex as a flow chart. It’s up to you to decide what

will work best for your class and how much time you have for preparation. You can find templates for graphic organizers online or in many print teacher resources.

TRY MORE PREP WAYS TO ACTIVATE SCHEMATA

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MAKE A SENSORY OR SMALL WORLD BOX ON THE TOPIC

GETTING STUDENTS READY TO LEARN DOESN’T HAVE TO BE COMPLICATED, BUT IF YOU HAVE THE TIME TO PREPARE YOUR OPTIONS ARE EVEN MORE NUMEROUS. Even a simple discussion can be enough to get students ready to learn new material you present in class. If you take the time to get students ready and the time to prepare those activities, you will find that your teaching is more effective and your students are more successful. And doesn’t that make it all worth it?

If you teach younger children, making a sensory box or small world bin is a great and interesting way to help students remember what they already know. In a medium sized box, collect several objects related to the unit you plan to teach. If you are going to teach a unit on sports, for example, your box might include a ball, a ticket stub for a sporting event, a whistle, pictures of players or their cards, a list of rules on how to play, etc. Introduce the items to your class and ask them to share what the objects make them think about or feel. If you are creating a small world bin, your goals are slightly different. Small world bins usually have a base material along with items that students can use in pretend play. If you are teaching a unit on sports, you might have shredded green paper for your base (to simulate a grassy field), small figures especially those dressed in sporting uniforms, small sports balls and props to create a playing field such as nets or goal posts. Encourage your students to play with the small world bins before you introduce your topic.

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DO A THEMED SHOW AND TELL

The day before you plan to introduce your topic, give students a show and tell assignment. Ask each person to bring in something related to the topic you will be teaching on. On the day of, have students share what they brought and tell the class about it. As they do, they will be remembering experiential details and at the same time getting ready to retain new information with ease. And don’t think show and tell is just for kids. Even adults will benefit from speaking in front of their peers and sharing something about themselves in this simple activity.

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How Was Your ESL Lesson? How To Assess Your Own Teaching HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED HOW WELL YOU ARE DOING YOUR JOB?

This is a question we all have to ask ourselves. Though feedback from our students is very useful, we shouldn’t always rely on them to provide this information since it is something we are quite capable of checking on our own. How well you are covering your students’ expectations and language needs is of utmost importance and not something you should take lightly. So what questions can you ask yourself to ensure you are meeting your ESL objectives? Take a look.

CHECK YOUR OWN TEACHING QUALITY OBJECTIVELY

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GOALS

Having clear attainable goals is important for any task one must accomplish. In the ESL classroom it is certainly no different. Setting goals allows us to know and plan where we are headed. They allow us to know what we have to accomplish in each lesson and in each level. When goals are not clear, we run the risk of spending time on unnecessary things. Also, I encourage you to share the goals for each lesson with the students. By doing this at the beginning of the class, your students will understand what will be covered during the lesson, and they will know what to expect. Their language learning goals and interests are central to the development of the program. You should involve your students in setting the goals of their program. So ask yourself: • Were the goals clearly set at the beginning of the lesson? • Were these goals appropriate? • Were they accomplished?

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STUDENT PARTICIPATION

As we all know, the more students participate, the better they learn and retain what they are learning. Some theories suggest we all learn by doing, so if that is the case, by using the language students will be better prepared to communicate. What happens often is that some students participate more than

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others. Pay close attention to this, it is a lot more common than you think and sometimes we don’t even notice. Make sure to call out your students’ names and also, assign tasks clearly, so that it isn’t always the same students asking and the same answering. Take a look at these questions. • Did everyone participate equally? • Was there sufficient student performance?

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STUDENT MOTIVATION

Student motivation is key for their progress. If the language and activities are personally relevant, students will be more motivated to comprehend and use the language and the learning effect will be much greater. Students want what they learn to be immediately applicable to their lives. They want to know why something needs to be learned. Understanding and responding to students’ goals is one of the most important ways of motivating our students. Also, success in itself is one of the greatest motivators. Giving students a sense of their achievements and progress, is incredibly important. We also need to be sensitive to stages where they feel they are not learning, and give extra encouragement. Another motivator is our general attitude towards them. Remember that our enthusiasm and liveliness is infectious and a good way to keep the ball in the air is by using varied activities that the students enjoy. • Were students motivated in the lesson? • Did you encourage your students to achieve without pressure? • Did you provide varied activities that the students enjoyed? • Did you provide a relaxed learning environment?

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MATERIAL

So, where does the content you teach come from? In most cases it is mainly provided by the course materials you chose for your students. Since these books are created with a specific target in mind, they aim to make the students’ exposure and use of the target language as rich, varied, and meaningful as possible. They provide a variety

of language students will need and use outside the classroom. It is important to keep all this in mind when choosing course material for your students since understanding how the content of the course works, will help you pin point the key goals of each lesson. Also, in cases where it is necessary, you will be able to adapt the lessons to suit the particular needs of your students. • Was the material age/level appropriate? • Was it relevant? • Is there enough and adequate material for self study?

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FEEDBACK AND CORRECTIONS

Providing feedback for students is essential. They need to hear what they are doing well and what needs work. However, we always need to consider the way we correct students since it plays a vital role in helping students become confident in their learning or become insecure. Offering constructive feedback and corrections at the end of the activities, and also encouraging self correction allows students to understand it is all just a natural part of the learning process. Involve students in evaluating their progress throughout their course as much as possible and remember to focus and give feedback on students’ success as well. • Were corrections clear? • Was consistent feedback given to students? • Will there be follow up on corrections?

OUR STUDENTS DESERVE NOTHING BUT THE BEST.

It is crucial for goals to be clear, since they have a direct effect on student motivation. Also, student participation, your choice of course material and how well you provide feedback are of great importance where student progress is concerned. Keep in mind that many life goals like future employment and other important personal goals might depend on how well you do your job. I’m sure you are well aware of what your students’ goals are, now make sure you are aware of what you need to do to help them achieve those goals.

Make lessons irresistible with these ideas to boost your creativity DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE YOU ARE RUNNING DRY ON CREATIVE IDEAS? That happens to all of us from time to time, and it certainly is a shame when it does. After all, great lessons thrive on creative ideas. Creativity makes everything more interesting and fun for students. But, let’s face it, no matter how creative we are, none of us have a never ending pool of creativity to tap into whenever we want. It just doesn’t work like that. Creativity has more like a flow and ebb to it. It comes and goes, and how we are, or feel, have a lot to do with that. The good news is there is a lot we can do to improve it. Creativity might seem innate, but it is actually a balance of a natural condition and something that can be acquired. In other words, creative thinking can be enhanced, and doesn’t necessarily depend on a natural condition. There are things we can do to improve our creativity. Take a look at these tips on how you can rekindle your creative spark.

IMPROVE STUDENTS’ CREATIVITY EMPLOYING THESE IDEAS

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KEEP YOUR STUDENTS IN MIND

So, let’s imagine you are preparing a lesson and nothing new comes to mind. A popular approach to creative thinking is to think about your students and how they will relate to the lesson you are preparing. Ask yourself these questions: •

What do they really need to learn and how?

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What are they sick of doing?

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What are the problems they have and what problem might they encounter with that particular lesson?

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What do your students do? What are their professions?

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What do they enjoy doing in their free time?

These questions and more like them, can give you precious insight on your students, where to direct the lesson and what to avoid.

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DON’T BE AFRAID TO MIX THINGS UP

We all tend to go down the old beaten path, once and again. Once we have tried something and it works, we are often reluctant to change. Well, I am sorry to tell you that this is murder on your creativity. Change is good, do things differently from what you would normally do. Don’t be afraid to ask your students and also, to share your ideas with them. Otherwise, you will never know if your ideas will work out or not. Keep in mind that some of your ideas will work and others won’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s “right” or “wrong”. Some things work with some people and not with others. Also, your students will definitely appreciate your trying to make their lesson more appealing. After all, it is a great way to show them you truly care about their learning.

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SOURCES OF IDEAS

Creative ideas can come from a lot of different places. Fortunately for ESL teachers , there are a million ways and even more to find ideas and information for our classes, and chances are someone before you has already come up with a great and very creative idea. That’s why it’s important to chat with other teachers to see what they are doing or how they might handle a specific task. Or better, compare your ideas with those theirs to see what they think. This is great because the help there is mutual. In addition to sharing information with fellow teachers, you can find a lot of amazing ideas on the web. Sites like busyteacher.org are absolutely priceless when it comes to creative ideas. So, don’t be afraid to do a little research.

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happens, you need to move to another location or move around a little. Perhaps even get some exercise or go for a walk. Sometimes when we feel more relaxed ideas come more readily. Since there are certain factors that may stimulate your brain to make connections between brain cells, it is also a good idea to change what you are doing temporarily just to give your mind a break. Many say that music is very useful here. If you feel stressed, soothing music can calm you down. On the other hand, if you want inspiration, faster-paced music can be much more useful.

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GET ENOUGH REST

Teachers are human beings, and many of us are juggling more than one activity at a time. So, with that in mind my last advice is to rest as much as you can. If you feel exhausted, it is not very likely you will be able to squeeze out something creative from your head. When you’re drained, everything you do will lack luster. Don’t be afraid to take a break, or even a nap. Have some coffee or tea and watch a little TV. You’re ideas will be better when your mind is fresh. Also, creative ideas will come more easily. Often, we view breaks as a waste of time. What we really have to keep in mind is how much time you waste when you can’t come up with fresh and creative ideas because you are too tired.

BEING CREATIVE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A PROBLEM AND IT IS DEFINITELY SOMETHING ALL OF US CAN IMPROVE WITH A LITTLE WORK. Keep in mind that your creativity in class can inspire your students to be creative as well.

DO YOU FEEL BURNED OUT?

Stress is the mother of all creativity killers. Spending too much time confined, stressed, or pressurized will not help anyone become more creative. If this

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