Job Discussion Forums

[bigjoe]

First, my background: I am a software developer with four years of work experience. I have bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science. I have experience teaching computer science to undergrads as a teaching assistant for two years. I took an online TEFL course and received a certificate in 2013.

I just got a job teaching English in Japan, and I start in May. Thankfully, it's not a chain school, just a small eikaiwa.

To those with TEFL experience, I ask you this question: how do you teach English conversation to beginners, especially? What are some methods that worked for you, e.g. games, role-play?

Thanks in advance! I hope this thread will be useful to anyone else who gets a teaching job but has no formal background in TEFL.

[TokyoLiz]

Ah, a job teaching ENSP (English for No Specific Purpose).

Beginner adults? Beginner elderly people? Beginner kids? They're all different audiences.

[bigjoe]

[currentaffairs]

Find out what textbook they are using at the language school (like Headway or Interchange). With beginners, it would be a good idea to consolidate the knowledge that they have and the structures that they have -hopefully- learnt in the conversation classes.

A decent grammar book and activity book would also be useful to bring with you. You can search on Amazon for some worthy titles..

[TokyoLiz]

For adult learners the most interesting and well-planned textbook series I have used is Cutting Edge.

For younger learners, Headway or Face2Face are well-paced.

I'd say look at half a dozen books and study how the authors planned them. What kinds of pacing and syllabus are interesting for you? It's important that you like the material you teach.

When you meet your students, ask them what topics they want to cover. Then return to your books and choose the one that has that content. That way, the students are invested in the textbook as much as you are.

Good luck.

[timothypfox]

And when you teach children, which you will probably most of the time - use the Let's Go series levels 1 and 2 especially - workbook, teacher's book, and textbooks. Unless the kids are really young do the activities without the CD. The CD is so so. Make lots of board games, vocab and picture concentration games, do a version of hangman when you just erase an arm or an leg from a person until he or she "Disappears", and get a scrabble game - but just use the scrabble tiles to have kids spell out new words you have on the board from a stack of letter tiles. And of course Simon Says. Search for free handouts on the internet such as easy to read books to do a read aloud, and maybe some easy writing practice. Good luck!

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

If you find yourself having to make materials for small kids:

this book

[bigjoe]

Thanks for your suggestions, everyone! They all look pretty helpful.

[move]

A good question. Also, an enormous one. It's good you have experience teaching, I think that you can transfer lots of the skills you learned teaching computer science.

Without trying to sound dickish, I'd recommend reading up on how to teach, try out new things and see what works and what didn't. A couple of helpful books useful that I have found are Harmer's How to Teach English and Nation's Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking.

If you're doing eikaiwa with adults, I think it's crucial that you identify their needs and wants for studying. Do they want more speaking, outside ideas to study, free discussion, error correction, etc? However, people are often hesitant to speak up, especially to the teacher. If they have any wishes or complaints, it's better that they tell you directly instead of the manager in the "so how was that?" post-lesson chat. You could even go as far as to create a simple questionnaire for students to fill out.

[fluffyhamster]

As you're working for a small eikaiwa, there may be less expectation of textbook-based lessons even if there is a set or recommended textbook available. Perhaps there'll be a library of resources and materials that you'll be more mixing and matching from on an ad hoc basis.

Either way, grammar practice books like Murphy's Essential (UK) or Basic (US) Grammar in Use are a quick way for you if not the students to learn or brush up on some (minimally-)contextualized grammar basics, and for possibly setting remedial homework if need be. There may be a bilingual edition available, that gives at least the exercise instructions in Japanese. If you're looking for a more detailed but very functional teacher's grammar then check out the Collins COBUILD English Grammar.

Actual textbook-wise, I'd recommend short dialogue-based stuff like Interchange or Side by Side (the former hopefully still has plenty of support stuff somewhere on CUP's site), though colourful books like IIRC (New) English File have nice pictures that can form the basis for visual-based, joint-attention activities. I'd steer clear of Headway and Let's Go, but that's just IMHO.

As for general methodology and teaching tips, Harmer ain't bad but I've always found LTP's books to be among the most thoughtful and pithy, especially their Practical Techniques, and The Lexical Approach (latter will be quite heavy-going, but will give you a good understanding of some central issues in ELT), and let's not forget Lewis' The English Verb (really helps one make sense of the deeper relationships and oppositions between the various tenses/compound tenses).

Or you could take a look at the collection of Richards' papers in his The Context of Language Teaching, as it will go a long way to helping you avoid potentially inauthentic contextualization (the chapters on Present Perfect, and the form of native answers to Yes/No questions, are classics!).

Depending on how much you want to convey of more authentic if not actual conversation (as opposed to mere bookishy classroomese for no specific purposes i.e. "General English"), books like Thornbury & Slade's Conversation may also be of interest. Here's a thread that will give you an idea of the sort of approach I'm on about: http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=1230327#1230327

Oh, and learner dictionaries can be very useful for getting ideas for lessons, and are actually a good way of quickly checking not just lexis but also grammar points: http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=65876&highlight=alds I'm pretty sure the free online Cambridge ALD has an E-J option that provides at least minimal glosses. For fully bilingualized (E-E-J) however consider getting the printed Z-Kai edition of the Oxford Wordpower, or perhaps the COBUILD ALD if that's still available bilingualized. Then there's the LDOCE, but I'm not sure how much it's bilingualized, could be just like the Cambridge and with only minimal glosses rather than full translations of all the definitions and examples.

A bit pricey but very portable and handy for offline research (your school may have very limited or zero internet access) are electronic dictionaries like my old Seiko SR-M4000, still going strong after a decade. It contains a whole range of reference works: the Kojien J-J dictionary with 230,000 entries, as well as a reverse-order version; a kanji dictionary with 6,355 characters and 45,000 compounds; the Genius J-E and E-J dictionaries; the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Concise Oxford Thesaurus; a katakana dictionary; a "Dictionary of English for Unexpected Situations" (basically a bilingual phrasebook of functional conversational phrases, some very handy indeed!); and various functions such as a calculator, search for all examples containing a word or words, or for parts thereof/wildcards etc. Just ask if you want more study resource recommendations for E, J, or indeed E <> J, whether, printed, electronic, or online.

I'd also recommend vocabulary references such as Schmitt's Vocabulary in Language Teaching, and Schmitt & McCarthy's Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition, and Use, as it's a relatively straightforward but very interesting area (moreso than grammar in the abstract, "for example").

I'd advise against doing too much explicit "Needs (more like Wants? LOL) Analysis" with the students. Sure, you'll want to (get to) know what they like or are more interested in, but asking them straight out too early on may lead to accusations that you don't know how to teach (because you don't seem to know what they need to learn or prioritize). If only you were teaching ESP eh LOL (but hey, the beauty of English in general and "for no specific purpose" is that is has SO MANY purposes, the world and all its conversations are your oyster). Informal post-lesson questionnaires aren't a bad idea though!