Hello everybody!
I am studying EFL at the university in Essen (Germany) and i have to contact a teacher of EFL and i have to find out whàt `methods of teaching` he uses in his class. I know that here are a lot of games and activities on these pages but they are all very special ones, and i have to know more about the general activities that are most popular in teaching EFL (for example: lecture, discussion, group work). I hope anyone can help me and tell me something about his methods (what methods do you use? Why do you use them? When do you use them?...)
Greetings from Germany...
Vivi
I need information
Moderators: Dimitris, maneki neko2, Lorikeet, Enrico Palazzo, superpeach, cecil2, Mr. Kalgukshi2
Oh my, there must be as many answers to this question as there are ESL teachers! I teach a noncredit CALL class for adults at a community college in the U.S. My students range in age from 18 to 75, and come from many countries (Asian countries include Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Viet Nam, Thailand, others include Mexico, Columbia, Russia, Ukraine, Eritrea, France, well, you get the idea.)
I teach the class ten hours a week as part of my full-time load. Two days a week we go to the computer lab, and they work using the Internet, doing quizzes and going to websites and answering questions. This portion is individualized, so students who can go faster do more, but everyone starts in the same place.
The other three days a week are a regular ESL classroom. In our school that means we teach a little of everything. I don't use a book per se, but I have them all buy the same ESL dictionary (English/English). Each of the three days has one exercise using the dictionary. It can be one where they work by themselves, or where they work together. One set of exercises has worksheets that ask questions about information found in the dictionary, to help them realize it is much more than just looking up meanings (especially the ESL dictionary, which has some extras). Another set of exercises involves pronunciation and understanding the symbols in the dictionary so that students can figure out the pronunciation of words by themselves. The third one is a card exercise they do in pairs. (They call this a "game.") The card exercises are either a match of prefix, root word, and meaning (information from the dictionary prefix list and looking up the root words), a match of sentence and word (they look up the word to see which sentence it fits in), or a match of two-part conversations in which one of them has an idiom (they look up the idiom and see where the other part of the conversation is).
I also give one dictation a week, in which I give them a worksheet with one word from a sentence already listed. They listen to the dictation of the sentence three times at regular native speaker speed, and write what they hear. All of the usual reductions and liaisons are kept. Then they compare with another student, and I read the sentences again 3 more times--fast, slow (with all the reductions and liasons, etc., but very slowly) and fast. Then we check it together and I mark what strange things happen in spoken American English.
I also do other exercises. Some of these include taking a long conversation (14 parts, for example) and cutting it into strips and having them put it back together while working in pairs; having students work in pairs to unscramble a sentence. (Sentence is cut so each word is on a single piece of card and put in an envelope along with two words that are extra. They have to make the sentence by dumping out the words and putting them together, leaving out two words. When each pair finishes, they return the words to the envelope, return it to the desk and take another envelope until everyone has done each sentence. Then we correct together and discuss other possible answers to the one the teacher thought of.)
I also give grammar explanation sheets and grammar homework which they are supposed to do at home, but which I check at the beginning of class the next day.
I also have them discuss different topics on one day, and then write something about the topic on the next day. I've been putting my student responses up on the Internet. (They have the option of telling me it's "private" and then I don't use it.) At the end of last semester, when I had them fill out an evaluation, I found they all thought this was very interesting and they said they really enjoyed reading what the other students had written. (I correct obvious errors, but leave in the "flavor".)
Hmm well, this is getting kind of long (That's what summer vacation and 33 years of teaching experience gets ya.) If anyone is interested in looking at what my students did (and if you could stand to read this far), you can check my webpage at http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried If you click on Student Writing, you will see examples from last semester.
I teach the class ten hours a week as part of my full-time load. Two days a week we go to the computer lab, and they work using the Internet, doing quizzes and going to websites and answering questions. This portion is individualized, so students who can go faster do more, but everyone starts in the same place.
The other three days a week are a regular ESL classroom. In our school that means we teach a little of everything. I don't use a book per se, but I have them all buy the same ESL dictionary (English/English). Each of the three days has one exercise using the dictionary. It can be one where they work by themselves, or where they work together. One set of exercises has worksheets that ask questions about information found in the dictionary, to help them realize it is much more than just looking up meanings (especially the ESL dictionary, which has some extras). Another set of exercises involves pronunciation and understanding the symbols in the dictionary so that students can figure out the pronunciation of words by themselves. The third one is a card exercise they do in pairs. (They call this a "game.") The card exercises are either a match of prefix, root word, and meaning (information from the dictionary prefix list and looking up the root words), a match of sentence and word (they look up the word to see which sentence it fits in), or a match of two-part conversations in which one of them has an idiom (they look up the idiom and see where the other part of the conversation is).
I also give one dictation a week, in which I give them a worksheet with one word from a sentence already listed. They listen to the dictation of the sentence three times at regular native speaker speed, and write what they hear. All of the usual reductions and liaisons are kept. Then they compare with another student, and I read the sentences again 3 more times--fast, slow (with all the reductions and liasons, etc., but very slowly) and fast. Then we check it together and I mark what strange things happen in spoken American English.
I also do other exercises. Some of these include taking a long conversation (14 parts, for example) and cutting it into strips and having them put it back together while working in pairs; having students work in pairs to unscramble a sentence. (Sentence is cut so each word is on a single piece of card and put in an envelope along with two words that are extra. They have to make the sentence by dumping out the words and putting them together, leaving out two words. When each pair finishes, they return the words to the envelope, return it to the desk and take another envelope until everyone has done each sentence. Then we correct together and discuss other possible answers to the one the teacher thought of.)
I also give grammar explanation sheets and grammar homework which they are supposed to do at home, but which I check at the beginning of class the next day.
I also have them discuss different topics on one day, and then write something about the topic on the next day. I've been putting my student responses up on the Internet. (They have the option of telling me it's "private" and then I don't use it.) At the end of last semester, when I had them fill out an evaluation, I found they all thought this was very interesting and they said they really enjoyed reading what the other students had written. (I correct obvious errors, but leave in the "flavor".)
Hmm well, this is getting kind of long (That's what summer vacation and 33 years of teaching experience gets ya.) If anyone is interested in looking at what my students did (and if you could stand to read this far), you can check my webpage at http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried If you click on Student Writing, you will see examples from last semester.
I need information
Hi Lorikeet,
thank you very much for your helping!That were exactly the things i wanted to know.You got a lot of experiences in the last years and i think it is a real varied teaching.
But i have one question to add:Why are you teaching in this way?I mean, have you learned it while you were studying?And do you use the theories you have learned(have you ever heared something about "Krashen" or "Chomsky"?)
We have to learn a lot of theories while studying and i am anxious if i will need them later.
Lots of greetings to San Francisco...
Vivi
thank you very much for your helping!That were exactly the things i wanted to know.You got a lot of experiences in the last years and i think it is a real varied teaching.
But i have one question to add:Why are you teaching in this way?I mean, have you learned it while you were studying?And do you use the theories you have learned(have you ever heared something about "Krashen" or "Chomsky"?)
We have to learn a lot of theories while studying and i am anxious if i will need them later.
Lots of greetings to San Francisco...
Vivi
Re: I need information
Hi Vivi,Vivi wrote:Hi Lorikeet,
But i have one question to add:Why are you teaching in this way?I mean, have you learned it while you were studying?And do you use the theories you have learned(have you ever heared something about "Krashen" or "Chomsky"?)
Vivi
There weren't as many theories when I studied in college! It was back in the stone age, when Linguistics departments were just being created, TESL/TEFL departments didn't really exist, and the audio-lingual approach was new. We studied transformational grammar, (surface structure/deep structure etc.), and I always thought it was very useful for the teacher to understand, but not something you would want to teach your students. I spent one summer taking a class for English teachers of high school students, in which the textbook used was a "transformational grammar" textbook for high school students. A book, I might add, which took away all the interesting elements of transformational grammar and replaced them with yet another set of memorizations. Instead of learning how to think about language, make possible rules about how sentences fit together, and then use different sentences to check to see if the "rules" worked, students were supposed to memorize the transformations that someone else had decided were correct. I always thought that was a real shame.
If someone asks me my philosophy of teaching, I always answer it's "eclectic." I'm in favor of using anything that can help students feel interested and use the language. I like my students to enjoy themselves and enjoy my class, as well as learning something.
Over the years I've gotten some ideas from other teachers, and some I've developed myself. You can tell if what you do is working out well or not, although different classes sometimes react in different ways to the same kind of assignment. Some of my more successful activities have been part of my repertoire for a long time. Other successful activities I just thought of last semester. I think one of the most important things in teaching is getting the feel of your class, and being able to alter course.
I visited a class once where the teacher was using flashcards in the appropriate way. Her idea was sound and her technique was perfect. However, there was a problem. She didn't have a feel for her class--they had gotten what they needed out of the exercise and were clearly getting tired of it and losing interest. She just continued on with the "plan." It was painful to watch.
Ah well, enough blabbing
