This is the first of what I hope will be a lighthearted series of variations on classic TESOL activities.
Backs to the board is without doubt my #1 go-to vocabulary activity as a warmer, filler, or end-of-lesson revision game, and I’m sure it is for many other teachers, too. Here’s a reminder of the classic set-up (if you know it well, just skip to the twist): Read More
I started this blogging thing a couple of months ago. I’m still not sure what to write about, so I cast my mind back to some of the most useful blog posts I have read over my teaching career. First lessons with a new bunch of learners sprang to mind immediately. And as luck would have it, it’s the start of a new academic year for many teachers 🙂 So here’s my comprehensive take on first lessons.
It’s often difficult to know what to do in a first lesson. Maybe it’s your first lesson in a new school. Maybe the learners all know each other already, but not you. Maybe you feel like you need to get started on the course book immediately, or maybe your course books aren’t arriving for another month! Whatever the case, I think it’s always worth ringfencing the first lesson to do some (not necessarily all) of the things in this post…
Unit 1: Present simple, present continuous and present habits; present perfect simple and present perfect continuous. Unit 2: Past simple and past continuous; Past perfect simple and past perfect continuous…
That’s the coursebook that I’m currently using with my teenage General English class. Needless to say, it follows a very structural syllabus. It has other bits – the four skills, vocabulary and some pretty good life skills bits, but on the whole, it all seems like a pretext for those Big Grammar points.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against grammar, but I do agree with Lightbown and Spada’s ‘Get it right in the end‘ position on language acquisition – primary focus on meaning with focus on form in meaningful contexts. To cut a long story short, let’s just say the treatment of grammar in this coursebook…
When I first started teaching, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. I DIDN’T! I still remember my first week of summer school, struggling through a unit on the Present Perfect… those poor students!
So what do I do now?
Read the rest of my blog post on British Council’s TeachingEnglish website.
Featured image adapted from: Compressor and jackhammer for drilling rock preparatory to shooting explosives, Lassen National Forest, California and hood_19948r . For more information on images on TESOLtoolbox, see Imagery.
This is part of a series of posts on teaching functional language. I’ll be referring to and expanding on my post Teaching functional language: Staging, so you might like to have a look there before reading!
So we’re looking at Exposure in functional speaking lessons. Actually, lot’s of what I’ll say here is just as applicable to a vocabulary or grammar lesson, too.
To start off, let’s break down what we’re talking about here. Learners are going to listen to a short stretch of English and… Read More
Varying interaction patterns is an essential skill for teachers. Done well, it really brings a lesson to life. Done badly (or not at all), it’s a sure way to spoil an otherwise great lesson.
If you’ve ever been in a classroom situation yourself, you’ll know how crucial it is. For instance, one day, my Kung Fu teacher forgot to get us to switch partners as he usually does… my wife was stuck with someone half her size who didn’t really get it. Compare that to another lesson, when we rotated between partners, a one-on-one with teacher and finished with group practice. It made a world of difference.
So anyway, getting back to ELT, I recently made a training session on varying interaction patterns for colleagues at work. See what you think… Read More
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